FALSE PERCEPTIONS – by Raphael ben Levi
There is a story of a famous Chasidic Rebbe who was going for a stroll when suddenly a woman attacked him screaming hysterically. After a while, she noticed that it was a case of mistaken identity and was not her husband who had deserted her many years ago. She burst into tears in shame and remorse. The Rebbe consoled her, saying that she had not beaten him but her eloped husband.
Doesn’t this happen to us all the time? We get angry at someone only to later discover that we were never truly angry at them, but at the person, we thought they were? So much misunderstanding and hurt could be avoided if we would pause a moment before responding to perceived offences, and communicate more carefully.
There was a learned rabbi who upon returning from a Yeshiva was riding along the riverside on his donkey feeling elated from the hours he had spent pouring over the Torah. There chanced to meet him an exceedingly ugly man, who greeted him, “Shalom Aleichem, my master!” The rabbi did not return his greeting but instead commented, “How ugly you are! Are all the people in your city as ugly as you?” “I do not know,” answered the man. “But go to the craftsman who made me, and say to him: ‘How ugly is the vessel which you have made!’”
A King had an only son, the apple of his eye who He wanted to master different fields of knowledge and experience various cultures, so he sent him to a far off country, supplied with a generous quantity of silver and gold. Sadly, the son squandered everything until he became destitute. In his distress, he returned to his father’s house and finally arrived at the gate of the courtyard to the palace. In the passage of time, he had forgotten the language of his native country and was unable to identify himself to the guards. In utter despair, he began to cry out in a loud voice, and the King, who recognised the voice of his son, raced out and embraced him with much joy and love.
In a world filled with so much darkness, God is at work seeking to teach us a forgotten language. He alone is the source, but we will only discover it when we return to Him.
www.mekudeshet.co.za
