Rav Mordechai Malachi shlit”a relates:
Lately, Hakadosh Baruch Hu has presented me with several nisyonos in financial matters. The nisyonos themselves are opportunities. A life without nisyonos is a boring life. Did I get up early in the morning just so I’d be able to sleep well at night? I want to be someone who is constantly moving forward, learning and growing and coming closer to the Creator of all worlds.
One Thursday night I was sitting in front of a list of debts, all of which had to be paid very soon. I had no idea where I would get so much money, and I was trying to find sources of funding. In my mind I went through the people I knew, and then I remembered a friend who owed me a large sum of money. The due date for repayment of that debt had long since passed. Perhaps it was preordained, so that I would have the money now, when I so desperately needed it.
I called him up, and we had a friendly conversation; then I reminded him of the debt. I told him I needed the money and would be happy to receive it as soon as possible.
He totally missed the message. Instead of promising to repay the money soon, he started stringing together all sorts of sentences, the underlying message being that he was obviously not planning on paying his debt in the coming days.
The conversation ended uncomfortably.
Was this a friend?! Is this how one acts to one’s friends?! I had stood by him in his time of difficulty, and he was turning his back on me when I needed money! Where was his honesty? Where were his good middos?! What sort of behavior was this?! This was not okay! I was angry. Yes, yes, I was very angry. This was not the way a mensch behaves.
Aah...a mensch. Nu, what did I tell you? Hakadosh Baruch Hu sends me nisyonos in order to uplift me. If I were stuck without money and without a borrower who was supposed to repay his debt, then I would have had to strengthen myself in emunah and bitachon, to make sure to stay calm, and to hope for Hashem’s salvation, for He can do anything! That is not easy, but it is still easier than a situation in which there is a person in the middle, and it seems as though he is...
