A young boy told a story: This morning Ima asked me to go to the grocery store. I wasn’t really in the mood to go out and buy things. In the morning I like to relax with a cup of chocolate milk and cookies, but I understood that now was not the time. Ima needed my help, and we had to have bread in the house.
I said to myself, “It’s kibbud eim! When I go to the grocery store I am doing the mitzvah of kibbud horim.” This thought gave me energy. I asked my mother what she needed me to buy, and I left the house.
In the grocery, I met my friend from school, and he was wearing a white shirt. “Yanky!” he called out to me. “Did you forget what we have in cheder today?” I was amazed. I had truly forgotten that today there was a big siyum for our contest called “Middos Uma’asim,” and we’d gotten a message to wear a white shirt!
What hashgachah pratis that I went to the grocery store. If I hadn’t helped Ima, I would have come to class in an everyday, colored shirt, and it would have been so embarrassing!
In the zechus of “middos and ma’asim” – honoring parents and helping out at home, I came with a proper white shirt to the siyum of our “Middos Uma’asim” Contest.
