Red Button

on Tuesday, 05 May 2015. Posted in Motivation and Inspiration, Elul, Parables, Rosh Hashana

R' Shimshon Pincus gives a beautiful mashal on the subject of trials that we feel are too strong for us.

One time a doctor was given the task of managing an entire wing of a hospital. He was to asses each situation, and see to it that each patient gets proper attention.

The instructions given to him were as follows: "Usually there will be enough time for you to be able to juggle all the patients yourself. Occasionally though, we have more than expected. You will have to make that judgment though... In the event that there are too many for you to handle - push this red button, and we will send you more doctors to assist you".

So he starts his job and all is going very well, until one day the patient number starts increasing. He starts working harder, and more quickly, until he is literally running through the corridors of the hospital just trying to get to the next patient in time. This keeps up for a while, but as time went on, the work ultimately got too much for him, and he wasn't making it to the patients quickly enough.

Eventually, a few of them didn't make it, and the families sued the hospital, who naturally then went and brought him to court.

In court, the judge asked him to explain his negligence, to which he replied frustrated "In the beginning, when there were a normal amount of patients - I did get to everyone in time! It was only after the number flew so high, that it was literally impossible for one doctor - no matter how quick, efficient or responsible he might be - to take care of all of them, that I started losing them! How can you call me negligent? I was doing my absolute best!! You should have seen how fast I was running from room to room! I didn't even give myself time to breath! I never exerted so much effort in my entire life!!"

The judge then asked him the obvious question "If you saw it was too difficult for you, why didn't you push the red button?"

Sometimes when the tests become too hard for us to handle, it doesn't help to just "try harder". Instead, we need to push the red button and bring in help from a powergreater than ourselves. We need to call out and say, "Tatty, please help me! Save me from this aveira, I can't deal with it! Help me focus on doing your will, not mine. Help me be useful to you today!"

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