Wednesday, October 28, 2009

A clever way to take care of yourself

An Incredible Story:
Following is an incredible true story that happened recently: An elderly lady in a nursing home in the Midwest passed away. Her children, who always visited her and took care of her, did their duty and did a proper Jewish Tahara and burial.

On the 5th day of sitting Shiva, the phone rang and the daughter sitting Shiva answered the phone. On the other end of the phone was her mother who she just buried. The daughter, in shock, immediately fainted. The phone rang again and it was her mother again, complaining that no one came to visit her that week.

The family then rushed to the nursing home and it turned out there was a mix up at the nursing home and it was her roommate that passed away and not this lady. So now the nursing home had the grim job of informing the children of the other lady that their mother died five days ago. The nursing home called and was trying to break it to these children slowly but before they could even tell the children what happened, the children callously answered if this call has anything to do with our mother they are not interested. These children said "All day long our mother wastes her time and just prays and prays and says Psalms". The children then added- "And the one thing she prays for is that when she dies she should have a proper Jewish burial". But, the children cruelly said, "We will outsmart her and when she dies we will spite her and make sure she will not have a proper Jewish Burial".

The nursing home staff then explained to them it was too late as she already received her proper burial!

Look at the power of prayer and to the extent Hashem will turn the world around to answer a prayer. Here this pious religious lady only prayed for one thing, a proper burial, knowing it was almost impossible, yet she didn't give up. So Hashem orchestrated this whole mix up to respond to the prayers of this lady.

Any of our prayers can have the same potential and power!

(This true story was recently told by a Menahel who heard it first hand from one of the Children)

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