Daily Chidush: How Much Money Do You Have?

[Music] saym says in the Torah mine is the money mine is the gold says Hashem master of Legions over there Hashem is in essence telling us that everything is his why does AEM tell us that everything is his I mean don't we know it the answer is no we don't and it's actually one of the primary causes for much of our suffering where we think that we are entitled to certain things because we worked for it or we did it or we this or we that and hasem in essence is telling us wrong you did nothing no but I did go to work God yeah but who gave you the brain that made your body work who made the work available who made the company even exist the reality is when a person really delves into uh his own existence he realizes how much of insignificant human being they are now hasem doesn't want a person to get into a depression but rather understand where is the source of everything that he has and that's why it's a mitzvah that we have that at the end of our prayer also to to at the end of our prayer in we have 10 remembrances 10 things that we must remember every day and one of them is that Hashem is the one that provides all sustenance everything why does Hashem tell us that he owns everything and why does the Hashem tell us that we have to remind ourselves that everything comes from him because so long as we think that something is ours that a certain amount of money was supposed to come to us that a certain amount of good was supposed to come to us that a certain shid we're supposed to have a certain prize we're supposed to be supposed to supposed to we are in essence living a two-faced Life One Life is we say we believe in God the other life is we're in essence uh going against God why because we think that that that mine is the my hand my strong hand is the one that that made this happen that I made this money and it's wrong it's very very wrong so wrong that it's uh could be considered at least the of the Dust of if not 100% heresy uh why because a person needs to understand that God owns everything everything and everything that we have he owns that too he's giving it to us in essence on Al loone it's not really our possession how do we know it's not really our possession when we leave this world we can't take any of it with us uh if Hashem decides to take it away he could take it away now the problem is that so long as we connect our happiness to our material possessions we slowly but surely get further and further away from Hashem to the extent where we could literally ruin our lives and make it impossible for ourselves to connect to hem and to connect to the am no matter what he does now I've told many people in sh uh the story of what happened to a cousin of mine uh a few years ago a cousin of mine uh I didn't know him personally but it was young kid 23 or 26 years old fell off of a scooter on second day of R in front of his house uh and uh hit his head went to the hospital they checked him they knew who he was very very rich guy his father has countless money I think $100 million or more and uh they said no we checked you best treatment possible best insurance possible best medical this that everything is good go home so the young guy that had his future ahead of him who was taught to believe that um everything that he does is in his hand you know it's not God it's not anybody else if you're uh work hard you'll succeed even though there's plenty of people that work much harder and don't succeed still the the uh rational minded uh heretical uh mindsets of today think that if you work hard you'll succeed and if you uh do certain things then in essence you're entitled to get reward for it so the kid lived this life unfortunately and Hashem obviously decided this is not the way to go and um although he went home into a very very expensive home and a very very expensive life when he went home he rested went to sleep and he died he never woke up again now if that wasn't bad enough for uh his father that had literally uh or has literally more money than he could spend in several Generations just about uh four months ago uh his brother this young man's brother or this uh uncle's son Second Son uh died at uh I believe he was 48 years old died in his apartment so he saw two of his children die in his own life which says one of the worst punishments a person can get now with all of that happening two kids dying in a couple of years you would think that the person would stop being an atheist would stop being a heretic against hem would get the sign would wake up but no unfortunately my uncle did not get the sign he did not get the message he continued going against theem he continued doing things of whatever he felt felt like he thought he was a good guy he thought he was a good person he thought that money could solve a lot of other issues and these things will go away well apparently they didn't because this morning he got the news that he has throat cancer and all the money in the world that he has and doesn't have is not going to be able to buy him an extra day in life and that's why the Tora says inem pays cash to his haters to their face in order to destroy them that sometime hasem gives a person many many chances in order to do chuv gives them different tests give them different things but so long as the person thinks that their material success is going to bail them out of their troubles whether it be health or otherwise it's very hard for them to accept that rebuke from Heaven to accept that there's anything from Heaven no matter what happens until it's too late and that's why hasem at some point decides that I'm going to pay this person cash to their face for whatever mitv and good that they did in this life in order to destroy them meaning that once the person arrives in shamim they have nothing but bad waiting for them how long permanent so you see it's not only a bad idea to connect our happiness to possessions it's dangerous it's dangerous to think that we own anything it's dangerous to think that we possess anything because the only thing that we could possess is things that we can take with us wherever we go and that's why years ago at the time of the Spanish Inquisition the Abel which was one of the Jewish sages that was also the treasurer of Spain it was very smart person and very successful and one day one of these told the king maybe that the treasurer your Treasurer maybe he's stealing from you so the says let me check it out I don't think he is he's a good guy and so on and so forth and he said well just ask how much money he has let's see if he lies about that so the king asked him how much money do you have and Baba said let me think let me think let me think and uh he gave him an amount the King was so upset by this amount because he knew that Justice Abel's house was worth more than that just his house was worth more than that immediately he said throw him in jail he's a liar he's a thief if he's lying to me surely he's stealing from me and he threw him in jail until I decide what to do with him after a few days the king just couldn't deal with it he said obviously that ban is a very wise person he knows that I know and I could find out how much money he has why would he lie to me with telling me such a low amount so he went to the prison cell and asked theel why did you lie to me so theel told him I didn't lie to you your highness I told you asked me how much do I have and I told you exactly what I have he said what are you talking about just your house is worth a million dollars you told me you have much less than that how could it be he says no your highness you asked me what do I have my house is not mine the money in the bank is not mine the money in the safe is not mine how do I know look just in a matter of a second when I gave you an answer you didn't even want to investigate you took all of my possessions and everything became yours in a second so does that mean it's mine obviously not so the amount that I told you was the amount of money that I've spent on giving takaka on actually investing into something that's gonna be Eternal and that's mine that you can't take away the amount of money that I told you is the money that I invested into the Torah and I invested it into sanctifying hashem's name that's money that you can never take away from me and that's mine when a person looks at his money that way then he's wealthy regardless of what amount he has when a person thinks of money as if it's his possession it's house his possession then he's poor his whole life and he's miserable his whole life and he's full of anxiety for all his whole life because he always thinks that he needs and he should have and he could have more than what he has so it's important to know that the sages taught us these things not as recommendations but it's simply life lessons that without them you're simply not living life you're just miserable why be miserable listen to the wise sages of am because all they're doing is telling you what God Said just in simple words this gives everyone that would listen to this a little bit of wakeup call of how to look at any amount of money no different than you look at a h there [Music]