An Important Meeting
Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach, zt”l, would always leave his home to go to Shul fifteen minutes before Davening started in order to get there early, even though it was just a two-minute walk. When asked by a family member why he allowed so much time for the walk, Rav Shlomo Zalman replied, “If you had a meeting with one of the most important people in the world, you wouldn’t take any chances on being late. You would make absolutely certain that you would be there on time. All the more so when I am not meeting just anybody. I’m meeting Hashem, the Creator of the world! I don’t want to take any chances on being late to my meeting with the Ribono Shel Olam!”
At the end of World War I, Rav Baruch Ber Liebowitz, zt”l, the Rosh Yeshivah of Kamenetz & the primary student of the Brisker Rav, zt”l, traveled by train with his family to Poland. Travel was very difficult, since the roads were full of troops returning home, & the trains were overflowing with soldiers too.
Along the way, the train stopped in the middle of a vast, open wasteland under Russian control. While more soldiers boarded the train, a few passengers got off, just to get a breath of air, and Rav Baruch Ber noticed that a young Jewish girl had done so as well. When the train was about to resume its journey, the soldiers who had just boarded would not let the Jewish girl get back on the train, claiming that there was no room for her. When Rav Baruch Ber saw this, he said to his family, “I cannot travel on this train any further. We can’t leave a young Jewish woman alone in a place like this!” Immediately, he & his family got off the train to stay with her, & the train pulled away.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, a military truck appeared & halted abruptly right in front of them. The driver looked at them & asked where they were headed, & when the driver heard where they needed to go, he told them that he just happened to be going to that exact place! It was a miracle that a truck passed through that deserted area, just at that moment when they were stranded. But an even greater miracle that the driver was headed to the same place, for their destination was an enormous distance away.
When Rav Baruch Ber’s sons-in-law would relate this story, they would always say that the driver was Eliyahu HaNavi, & the lifelong lesson they learned from this was that Hashem never causes one to lose out when they are doing a Chesed for another person!
