The Power of our Actions

17 Elul 5769

My apologies for the lack of posting - last week was a crazy week. iyH I will try and make it up this week.

Very often, we do things without giving them much thought. We brush our teeth in the morning, we eat lunch, we drop some tzedaka in a pushka - most of our actions are not done with great concentration. Nor do we consider the effects of our actions. I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad thing, I'm just pointing out what is.

If we truly realized the impact of our actions, both good and bad, it would change our avodas Hashem in a radical way. Rav Yisrael Salanter is quoted as explaining that sins are like stars. Stars, to our eyes, are very small specs of light. But in reality they are enormous balls of gas and energy, far larger than we can even comprehend.

Sin is like that, too. We don't think of a sin as being a huge deal - otherwise, we'd take more care in avoiding it. But in reality, sin is enormous.

The same can be said of a mitzvah. We do not realize how powerful our mitzvos are. If we did, we would take more care in performing them.

Rav Chaim Volozhener wrote a sefer called the Nefesh HaChaim. It's basically a sefer on mussar through kabbalah; very deep stuff. And in the first few chapters, Rav Chaim explains the following:

The pasuk tells us that we are created "b'tzelem Elokim," in the likeness of God. Now, that doesn't mean that God has a body, or that He looks like something and we were created in its image. Rather, that means we are comprable to God in some way. In what way could we possibly be compared to the Almighty?

Explains Rav Chaim, we have the power to affect worlds. Our actions down here on this earth affect what goes on in the Upper realms, in other worlds. HKB"H literally gives us the power to create and destroy worlds with our actions - do a good deed, and worlds are created. Do a bad deed, and worlds are destroyed.

Now, a full discussion of that concept is beyond the point of this blog, and I encourage you to search out further understanding of that idea. But our actions also affect what happens in this world. Chazal tell us that when Bnei Yisrael would go to war, they would send 12,000 soldiers out to the battlefield, and have 12,000 corresponding Jews davening for those soldiers. Because our koach is not in physical might, but in spiritual might. The next time you are about to do an aveirah, or the next time you are about to do a mitzvah, think about the power that you have. You are literally a superhero, with the ability to change the world. May Hashem give us the strength to change the world for the good and not the bad, kein yehi ratzon.

Hatzlacha Raba!