'ממקומו הוא יפן ברחמים'
‘From His place may He turn in His compassion’
I went to shtieblach to daven Shacharis. In shtieblach there are no set seats, the places are taken by the order that people come in. I went into the room of Tefillah and approached the place where I wanted to sit. I neared the seat to put my Tefillin bag down in the place that I wanted. In the second before my Tefillin bag reached the table, another mispalel leapt from the edge of the bench at lightning speed and grabbed the spot, staring at me like a kid who had won a game.
For a moment my heart pinched, but I immediately said to myself: ‘It was not he who did this, but rather it was the Creator Baruch Hu Who put in his heart to leap to this place. It seems that from elsewhere my Tefillin will rise in a better way, especially because of my foregoing. I signaled to the mispalel that it was okay and even told him with a smile: "Whoever takes the place first, the place belongs to him!!" And I moved to the other side of the Aron Kodesh, where the place was just as good and even more spacious than the previous one. Since I try to come to Tefillah from the first ten, I always have convenient places for me, Baruch Hashem.’
A few minutes passed and the Rav of the shul arrived for the minyan. When he rarely comes to this minyan, he sits exactly where I wanted to sit. The leaping mispalel had to move to a place that was not the most convenient place in the shul, but since this is the Rav's place when he arrives and there were still five minutes to the beginning of Tefillah... Now I understood that HaKadosh Baruch Hu had arranged for me in advance a good place to daven with Yishuv HaDa'as – peace of mind.
ב.ש.
