For a long time it has been my custom to say Tehillim for the refuah of my mother, she-tichyeh. Recently, I decided to add a few more pesukim to my Tehillim, from perek 119, the perek in which every eight pesukim begin with a different letter. This is a perek that is mesugal for knowing Torah and for success in learning.
Every day I say, bli neder, eight pesukim from this perek. On Sunday I say the pesukim beginning with the letter aleph, on Monday, those starting with beis, and so on. When I reach the end of the perek I start it again. This is my small effort toward success in my Torah learning.
At the time when I started this simple hishtadlus I did not notice the changes that were taking place, but in retrospect one could literally point at them and say, “Here is Hashem!”
During the first days that I started saying these pesukim, someone asked me to learn the Daf Yomi with him as a chavrusa. Baruch Hashem, I am zocheh to be a maggid shiur in a yeshivah ketanah, and this requires that I prepare shiurim. However, I really wanted to know more, and therefore I davened for this, but I was confused regarding the amount of time I was to set aside for additional learning. I also didn’t know in what specific way I should act on my desire, and then a chavrusa came along and asked me to learn with him.
Moreover, we set up a time and started to learn, and within a short time we were learning Daf Yomi with clarity and understanding.
How did I know that all this came in response to my heartfelt tefillah? One day, my chavrusa wasn’t feeling well and our session was cancelled. The same thing happened on the following day as well. That evening I recalled that during those two days I had forgotten to say the additional pesukim from perek 119.
On the third day, my chavrusa still wasn’t feeling well, but by then I had already gone back to saying the Tehillim. You surely won’t be surprised to hear that on that day my chavrusa succeeded in coming to shul to learn with me even though he still wasn’t fully recovered.
There is a power to saying pesukim of Tehillim, and I have learned to use it. Sometimes before davening, the yetzer hara shows up and tries to suggest that I catch up on yesterday’s news. There are papers in which people write updates about all the ups and downs of the war. When glancing at this paper, I realized it was the yetzer hara threatening to turn my thoughts to things that are not proper preparation for tefillah. I push him away, say the pesukim of Tehillim in the letter I am up to, and ask Hashem for the zechus of knowing Torah.
It’s amazing to see how strong the effect of this tefillah is.
