On Thursday, Tu BiShvat, I decided to take my family on a trip up North, to the tziyun of a great tzaddik. The entire family was already waiting in the van, and I was in the house organizing a few last details. Precisely during those pressured minutes a Yid knocked on my door. When I opened the door in order to go downstairs to the van, the uninvited guest started talking.
“Listen,” I told him, “I can’t talk to you now. There’s a car honking for me downstairs.”
“Two minutes, just two minutes,” he asked.
Not a contribution, not food, just two minutes. I gave them to him.
You’re my neighbor’s friend, right? He mentioned a name, and I nodded.
“He has a few girls at home who are stuck with shidduchim, and we thought it might be connected to fights between the neighbors. Perhaps you could speak to him and have some sort of influence on him.”
“I really am his good friend,” I answered in a hurry, “but not to the point that I would be able to influence him. I’m not the type for this sort of thing. I’m sorry. But I’m really not the right person.”
I didn’t have time to see his reaction. “It’s nice that you’re thinking about your neighbor, my friend,” I continued. “May Hashem send him a yeshuah very quickly. Thank you very much.”
He also said something, maybe also a “thank you,” or something else. I was already in the car. I apologized to everyone, and we set out on our way.
When I came to the tziyun, suddenly a surprising thought came to me. Why did Hakadosh Baruch Hu send this friend of my neighbor to me just when I was on my way out? Perhaps there was a message from Shamayim here that I should daven for his daughters? I called my friend and told him I was standing in a special place, near the tziyun of a tzaddik, and I asked him for the exact names of his daughters so that I could daven for them.
That feeling that I was a messenger of the Creator, that I had gotten a Heavenly message to daven for them, brought me to daven from the depths of my heart. I shed tears and asked Hashem yisbarach to have pity on all of the precious bnos Yisrael so that they would build their own homes very soon.
On Tuesday, less than a week later, I got a call from my friend. “You’re one of the first ones I’m calling,” he told me, “because I feel that you have a big part in this shidduch. In your zechus my daughter got engaged.”
“Mazal tov!” I was genuinely excited for him.
“On Thursday, after you davened, the shadchan called and suggested the shidduch. This was a proposal that had been suggested before and didn’t go through, and now, baruch Hashem, it came to be.”
Sometimes what is needed is one more tefillah from the depth of the heart in order to open up the gates of Shamayim.
