I am starting this story from the end.
My friend has a son who couldn’t adjust to the rigors of yeshivah life. He found himself outside yeshivah in the full sense of the word, and he bought a motorcycle worth 34,000 shekels. Somehow he had managed to earn a sizable sum, so on the day that this story happened, he had a fat envelope holding 300,000 shekels stowed inside his motorcycle.
He parked the motorcycle somewhere, and when he got back he discovered his motorcycle had disappeared. The boy, who is already a young man, was worried. This was a great loss for him – both the motorcycle and the money. He had to find them both. At first he thought it would be solved quickly, because he knew that the motorcycle had a locater device on it, but after some time, when he’d received no notice of the motorcycle, he began to feel very pressured.
Soon afterward, he got a call from the police: “Your motorcycle is blocking a private parking lot here, and if you don’t come to move it this minute, we’re going to give you a ticket.”
They thought they were threatening him, but in truth this was the good news the young man had been waiting for. He ran over to the address, and when he got there he saw how the thieves had neutralized his locater device before riding off with the intention of disappearing along with the motorcycle.
A few minutes after they stole the motorcycle, as they were riding along, they saw several police cars. The thieves became very nervous, and they left the motorcycle in a private parking lot, planning to come back to take it later. The motorcycle was blocking a car, and the owner of the parked car called the police and saved the motorcycle.
It was very exciting. The young man’s big loss came back to him with nothing missing. All the money was waiting for him inside the storage compartment of his motorcycle.
“Do you see?” my friend told his son. “Look how Hashem helped you! Now it would be very good to give something back to Him, some hakaras hatov. You know what? I manage a chessed organization, and an almanah spoke to me a week ago telling me that she has no money to support her children. How about if you show gratitude to Hakadosh Baruch Hu by giving her a respectable sum of money?”
The son, who was very emotional about the great chessed Hashem had done for him, took out 70,000 shekels and gave them to the almanah.
“Hashem has many ways of bringing his children close,” his father said. “My son understood that Hashem was talking to him, and he gave this large sum to tzedakah with all his heart. I am sure that the zechus of the tzedakah will stand by him, and he will yet do complete teshuvah.”
Why do I say that this story begins at the end? Because that is how I see it: This is the story of a widow who desperately needed 70,000 shekels. What did Hashem do? He took the money from the owner of the motorcycle and returned it to him on the same day. In this way He let him understand that the fact that he has money is not to be taken for granted. In getting back his lost possessions, he felt he’d received a gift, and with great emotion, he recognized the good that the Creator of the world had done for him, and he gave the almanah everything she needed.
It’s amazing how Hashem navigates circumstances – and motorcycles – in such a wondrous way.
