My friend in kollel shared with me a difficulty he has been facing recently: Since Yom Kippur, his wife hasn’t received any salary from her work, and he really didn’t know what to do. “What do you say?” he asked me.
What could I say? I didn’t have a salary to give him. “Learn emunah; learn Shaar Habitachon,” I advised him.
“Do you have a sefer I can borrow?” he asked.
“Yes. I have a kuntres – ‘Beis Halevi – Middas Habitachon.’ Learn from it, and you’ll see brachah.”
He learned and saw brachah. He strengthened himself and believed. For two weeks he looked into the booklet – one day yes, one day no; he would learn a paragraph or two, and two days later he would continue from where he left off.
Two weeks later, he decided to learn it systematically. From that point on, he determined, he would learn the kuntres every day without fail, delving into the daily page.
The decision worked out well on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. Then on Wednesday, in the middle of the night, at 4 a.m., he woke up and recalled suddenly that, “Hey, I didn’t learn from the kuntres Beis Halevi!” He washed his hands, said birchos haTorah, opened the kuntres, and learned for two minutes before returning to bed. How sweet is the sleep of one who trusts in Hashem.
At 7 a.m. the next morning he opened his eyes and heard stirring words. His wife was talking on the phone and saying: “Baruch Hashem. Hodu laHashem ki tov!”
They had called her from work to let her know that most of the salary she hadn’t received over the past few months had been deposited in her account.
It happened specifically on that day, following that night when he had truly demonstrated his commitment to learning about bitachon.
