Baruch Hu rewarded him that a refugee came from Egypt – it happened to be Moshe Rabbeinu, and he took him in.
Same thing with the daughter of Pharaoh. When she went down to bathe, she was making a demonstration against her father. She was greatly troubled by her father’s behavior and had been harboring these thoughts in her mind for a long time already. Her father was persecuting the Bnei Yisroel for no reason, and she recognized how noble these people really were, and she was outraged by how they were being degraded by the Mitzrim. And as a result of her cogitations, she came to the conclusion that she wanted to side with the Am Yisroel. She wanted to break herself away from the travesty of justice she witnessed in her country – that’s what her bath was all about. And so there was something there, some idealism and sacrifice, that was rewarded by Hashem.
And so it means that according to your idealism, according your desire to succeed in this service of Hashem, that’s how much you’ll succeed.
More Bang for Your Buck
That’s what our Gemara which introduced us to this subject of how rare it is to do a perfect chessed says about this question: ֹליָכו – I might think for everybody it’s a rarity, ≈ןּכ םƒָׁ מַי ̆ ‡ר≈¿י ַף‡ – even for a yirei Shamayim; that even someone who fears Hashem and wants to give, he also may sometimes invest his money in things that are not so important. So the Gemara says, “No, for yirei Shamayim it’s different.” „ח∆ ס∆ מַר¡‡ׁ∆ נּ∆ ̆ עו ֹלָם „ﬠַ¿ו מ≈ עו ֹלָם 'ה – Like the possuk teaches, ‘The kindness done for Hashem, that’s eternal forever and ever, ﬠַל ָיו‡ר≈¿י – on those who fear Him.’”
If you are a yarei Shamayim, Hakadosh Baruch Hu causes more solid achievements to come your way. He helps you gain more perfection in the mitzvos – you’ll do the same amount of effort and time and money that others put in, but you’ll achieve much, much more.
A Wise Investor
Now why is this so? Is Hakadosh Baruch Hu partial to yirei Shamayim? And the answer is that of course He is. But besides that, there’s a logical reason that a yirei Shomayim’s tzedakah will succeed more – it’s because he puts more into it!
If you’re a yirei Shamayim, you’ll take it seriously. Someone who fears Hashem, he’s aware of Hashem, so a mitzvah opportunity is very precious. Not only will he give more, but he’ll make sure to give it to the right people. Now you’ll say you don’t know who the right people are. So you’ll investigate! A yirei Shamayim doesn’t treat a mitzvah so flippantly. He asks somebody who is competent!
Why should it be different from buying an apartment building? If you had the money to buy an apartment building, would you just rush out, you amateur, you am ha’aretz in real estate, would you go out and plunk down a million dollars? No! You’d ask somebody who knows. You’d pay a man a thousand dollars to advise you. You’ll pay someone else to do a checkup, to check everything in the building. The financials, the tenants, the building itself! There might be termites; maybe the walls are caving in. Otherwise, you could pay a lot of money into a building and then discover that you're saddled with a white elephant; that you've lost your money.
Investment of a Lifetime
And that's the trouble — if you don’t care enough to make a mitzvah more perfect, so what do you want? In Yiddish you say az men fregt, blundget men nit. That means if you ask directions, you'll get there. But if you're trying to go someplace, and you don't ask anybody, so if you arrive at the wrong destination you only have yourself to blame.
But the one who understands that there’s nothing more valuable than the investment of a mitzvah, so he already is heading in the right direction. A mitzvah, that's all we live for! To do chessed, to give tzedaka, that’s one of the great achievements in life.
What do we live for after all, the property in this world? As the big hospitals say on the billboards when they ask for donations – ‘You can’t take it with you.’ Hospitals tell you that you can't take it with you – as if you could take with you what they do for you with your charity. But whatever it is, the only thing you take with you is that nickel. And therefore, the best thing is to get it right! As much as possible to fulfill that great admonition of our Sages, to do a chessed that Hashem appreciates most.
