RABBI YAAKOV ASHER SINCLAIR (ohr.edu)
“...and all the families of the earth shall bless themselves and by your offspring” (28:14)
Close eyes for a moment and imagine that Mashiach has come!
He’s here. Everything is great. Everything’s marvelous, everything’s amazing. You jump out of bed to daven with the dawn, after learning for an hour before davening. You run to the Beit Midrash. On your way, your neighbor, who hasn’t spoken to you in six months, gives you a big smile.
You arrive at the Beit Midrash twenty minutes early. At the door, the maintenance manager says to you, “Good morning, Sir. Please make sure you learn with all your energy and concentration today.” You greet your study partner and immediately get down to learning. You have zero desire to shoot the breeze with him. You plunge into the Torah study; every teaching is open before you like a brilliant clear landscape. You have absolutely no desire to get up and make a cup of coffee or check your phone.
Everything is wonderful, but you feel something’s missing. In Kohelet, it describes the days of Mashiach as “yamim sh’eyn bahem chafetz,” meaning “not desirable days.” The commentators explain that they won’t be desirable days because a person will no longer need to struggle against any internal inclination to transgress. There were many things in the past that we had to fight so hard to conquer in our daily battles, such as not speaking slander, not looking where we shouldn’t, not being jealous, and praying and learning with attention and love. For all those challenges in which we succeeded, we received so much reward.
Well, when Mashiach comes, we will no longer have that struggle, and, therefore, we’re no longer going to get that reward. That’s why they are called “yamim sh’eyn bahem chafetz,” not desirable days. You know you can no longer get that ultimate reward that comes from meeting a challenge and succeeding in overcoming it.
Of course, everyone wants Mashiach now.
But remember, when Mashiach isn’t here, right now, that’s when the “big bucks” are flowing. That’s when your reward is astronomical, that’s when it’s beyond imagination. So, grab that opportunity now! It’s not going to last forever. Every day we wait for him. And, of course, we want him now. But, right now, while we still have that opportunity -grab it. Think of all that reward stashed up in the only place it really matters, in the First National Bank of Olam Haba.
