Parashat Noach: A Future Only Hashem Can See

Sometimes a person waits for something for so long that he begins to wonder if it will ever happen. He has been praying and hoping for years, perhaps watching others around him receive the very thing he has been longing for. As time passes, he may begin to lose hope. But one of the foundations of our emunah is recognizing that Hashem already knows what our future holds. What may appear impossible to us today may already be part of the beautiful future that Hashem has planned for us. In this week's parashah, Noach, the Torah tells us that Noach was 600 years old when the Mabul began. Chazal tell us that Hashem had given that generation 120 years to repent, during which Noach was involved in building the teivah. That means Noach was 480 years old when he began building it. The Torah tells us the instructions Hashem gave Noach regarding the teivah, including the following words: " וּבָאתָ אֶל הַתֵּבָה אַתָּה וּבָנֶיךָ וְאִשְׁתְּךָ וּנְשֵׁי בָנֶיךָ אִתָּךְ " — You shall enter the teivah, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons' wives with you. There is something remarkable about these words. Noach was 500 years old when he had his first child. That means when he heard these instructions, he still didn't have any children. Imagine what Noach must have felt after hearing those words. He had lived for 480 years without children. Generations had come and gone. People around him had raised families, watched their children grow, and enjoyed their grandchildren and great-grandchildren. And Noach was still waiting. Then, in the middle of Hashem's instructions about building the teivah, he heard the most wonderful news. Hashem told him he was going to enter the teivah together with his sons and their wives. Not only was he going to have children, but those children would grow up and get married. What an incredible piece of news that must have been! Hashem was telling Noach about a future that he could not yet see. The entire future is already known to Hashem. Even while Noach was living through those years of waiting, what was still a hope from Noach's perspective was already a certainty from Hashem's perspective. This is something that can give us a lot of chizuk. A person may be waiting for a shidduch, for children, for parnasah, for a refuah shelemah, or some other yeshuah. He looks at his circumstances and cannot imagine how things will change. Perhaps he has already tried everything he could. Years have passed, and nothing seems to be moving. But we have to remember that our view of the future is very limited. We can only see what is happening right now. Hashem sees the entire picture. He knows what is going to happen tomorrow, next year, and the year after. And the fact that we cannot see a solution doesn't mean there isn't one. Imagine if someone could go back in time and tell a person who had been waiting for a yeshuah for twenty years, "I know you can't understand why this is taking so long, but I've seen your future. In just a little while, everything is going to change." How much strength and comfort would those words give him! Of course, we don't have anyone telling us our future, but we have something even more fundamental. We know that Hashem is guiding our lives with love and wisdom, and no situation is ever beyond His ability to change. Our job is to continue praying, making the proper hishtadlut, and never allowing the passage of time to convince us that our situation is beyond Hashem's ability to help. I recently heard about multiple people who were blessed with their first babies after years and years of waiting, one of them after nearly two decades. Noach was 480 years old without children, but the family he would one day have was already part of Hashem's plan. We may be standing at a point in our lives where we cannot see or even imagine how things are going to change. But Hashem sees what we cannot. And while we wait, we should strengthen ourselves with the knowledge that Hashem may already have the beautiful future we are hoping for already planned for us, even though we cannot see it yet. Shabbat Shalom.