Rav Avigdor Miller on Gam Zu L’Tovah

A:

We have a Torah and Moshe Rabbeinu is emes, v’soraso emes, and the Torah he gave us is true. And it states there that Hakodosh Boruch Hu does things l’tovah. He made the world for chesed. לעשה השמים בתבונה כי לעולם חסדו, everything He made, and everything He made is for chesed. כי לעולם חסדו, it’s a world of chesed. And if at some times it seems to be non-chesed, like a toothache; it’s still a chesed. If not for the toothache, you wouldn’t go to the dentist, and your tooth would rot away. Now you run to the dentist, he puts in a filling and you have a tooth. Pain is a chesed. Without pain people would be sick, and they would never know what’s wrong with them.

I once heard this story. In Canada, there was a young woman who didn’t have any nerves of feeling in her hands. She was putting her hand over the gas range and she smelled flesh burning. She didn’t know it was her own flesh; her hand was burning from the gas range! She didn’t have any sensation of pain; she lacked the sensation of pain and therefore didn’t know her flesh was burning till she smelled it. If you have the sensation of pain, you pull back and you save yourself. Pain is a lifesaver. Pain is a chesed gadol. So don’t think pain is a harm.

Poverty; for many people poverty is a yeshua, a salvation. Wealth? There was a wealthy man, I remember, he moved way out on Long Island. Then he lost all his money. So he moved back to Brownsville; this was in the good old days when  Brownsville was a Jewish neighborhood. And he sent his boys to Mesivta Chaim Berlin. I was surprised to see him. “Oh, I said, “What are you doing here?” So he told me that he lost all his money, so now he’s back in Brownsville, and he’s sending his boys to yeshiva. Out there his boys wouldn’t go to a frum place like Chaim Berlin. Only because he lost his money his family was saved – a true story. Many people should lose their money and move back to a frum neighborhood. It was a yeshua, no question about it! Wealth is a terrible injury, if it is misused.
TAPE # E-238