The Dreamer at Rest

A man once went to the Slonimer Rebbe, the Nesivos Shalom, and said “I want so badly to do good, to finish Shas, to daven with kavanah, to give tzedakah, to go out of my way for chessed. I want to live that life so badly. But I try and I try, and the yetzer hara interferes every time. Rebbe,” the man started to cry, “I want to make Hashem proud, but I just can’t win, I just can’t. I’m a good-for-nothing. On my kever, they will write, ‘Here lies the baal sheifos.’”

The Rebbe looked at this sad man and responded, “If I were to walk into a cemetery and see a gravestone engraved, ‘Here lies the baal sheifos,’ I would daven there more than any other grave!” (Adapted from The Parsha on Fire, by Reb Hillel Eisenberg)