Becoming a Tzadik in One Second:

The pasuk (Tehillim 103:12) states: "As the distance of east from west, He distanced our transgressions from us." The Shidlovtza Rebbe zy"a (quoted in Sefer Divrei Bina, Parshas B'haaloscha) explains that when a person is standing and facing east, he can turn in one second to face west. So too, Hashem has so much mercy on us that he makes it very easy for a person to turn himself around and become a complete tzadik. This is as Chazal say (Kiddushin 49B) that if one marries a woman on condition that he is a complete tzadik, the marriage is valid because he may have had thoughts of teshuva, which deem him a tzadik. The way this works is, as we said, just the desire to do teshuva and return to Hashem, opens the door to allow Him to enter and purify us.