Chazal teach us a beautiful principle: אין אדם שומע לי ומפסיד — Hashem tells us, "No person ever listens to Me and loses out." Sometimes, when we want to do the right thing, it will seem like we're losing out. We may have to give up our time, our money, or even an opportunity that appears to be very important to us. At that moment, it may seem like we're making a great sacrifice. But Hashem tells us that when we listen to Him, we will never lose out. We may not understand how everything is going to work out, but we can rest assured that when we do His will, we always gain. A woman named Chaya related that on Erev Rosh Hashanah this year, she received a phone call from her mother asking if she could take her shopping for Yom Tov. The timing couldn't have been worse. Rosh Hashanah was approaching, and Chaya had barely begun preparing herself. All she had managed to make so far were challot and an apple cake. She still had an entire Yom Tov menu to cook, and with Rosh Hashanah falling on Shabbat this year, everything had to be ready before candle lighting. Furthermore, her mother lived half an hour away, so between the driving, shopping, and helping her put everything away, she knew she would be losing most of the day. Nevertheless, her mother needed her, and Chaya wasn't going to pass up the opportunity to fulfill the mitzvah of kibbud av va'em. She got into her car and drove to the city to pick up her mother. They went shopping, and afterward, Chaya drove her mother home and helped her put everything away. By the time she finally headed back, she was feeling tremendous pressure. There were only a few hours left before Yom Tov. How would she possibly prepare enough food in such a short time? But she didn't regret helping her mother. She knew she had done the right thing, and now she was going to do her best with whatever time remained. As soon as she got home, she hurried into the kitchen and started cooking. But before she got very far, the phone rang. It was her father, who was the rabbi of a large shul, and he sounded very excited. "Chaya, you're not going to believe what just happened!" One of his congregants owns a restaurant, and that day, he unexpectedly had a tremendous amount of freshly prepared food left over. Rather than letting it go to waste, he decided to bring all of it to the rabbi's house for Yom Tov. And this wasn't just any kind of food. There was lamb, steak, salmon, an assortment of delicious salads, and all kinds of beautifully prepared dishes. There was so much food that her father couldn't possibly fit everything into his refrigerator. He told Chaya, "I'm sending all the extra food over to your house right now in a taxi!" Chaya couldn't believe it. Just a short time earlier, she had been wondering how she would possibly manage to cook enough food for Yom Tov. Now an entire Yom Tov menu was being delivered right to her doorstep. And not just any menu. The food was far more elaborate than anything she could have managed to prepare herself. She had gone out of her way to help her mother, and Hashem arranged for her to have everything she needed without having to prepare it herself. She was overwhelmed by the hashgachah peratit she had just witnessed. The timing, the unexpected surplus of food, the restaurant owner's decision to bring it to her father, and then her father's inability to fit it all into his refrigerator — every detail worked out perfectly. Chaya thought she was giving up her valuable time, but Hashem showed her that the mitzvah hadn't cost her anything. In fact, she ended up with a much better Yom Tov meal than she would have had otherwise. And of course, the greatest gain of all was the mitzvah itself, which will remain with her for all eternity. There will be many situations in life when we're hesitant to do the right thing because we're afraid of what we might lose. We may have an opportunity to help someone, but we're worried it's going to take too much time. Or an opportunity to give tzedakah, but we're concerned about needing the money for our own expenses. A person wants to dedicate more time to learning Torah, but he's not sure how he's going to manage everything else. Of course, we have to act responsibly, but when we know that Hashem wants us to do something, we should do it with confidence. We're not dealing with a limited world in which every minute or dollar we give away is gone. We're dealing with Hashem, who has unlimited ways of taking care of us. And even when we don't see such an obvious outcome, the principle remains just as true. Sometimes a person does a mitzvah and appears to have sacrificed something. He doesn't receive an unexpected gift or an immediate solution to his problem afterward. That just means Hashem is not openly showing him the gains from his sacrifice. Chaya was given the special privilege of seeing the words of Chazal come true right before her eyes. The next time we have an opportunity to do a mitzvah and it looks like we're going to lose out, we should remind ourselves: אין אדם שומע לי ומפסיד . We may not always see how, and we may not always understand when, but Hashem is always taking care of us. And the greatest gain of all is the mitzvah itself, whose reward lasts forever.
