TWO FACETS OF WAITING

"A person who wants to purify himself (to do teshuvah) is helped from Above, but he is told to wait." From the Hebrew word "Wait!" - המתן - we learn something important about waiting, Smack in the middle of it, there is another word: מת ("dead").

So waiting is an aspect of death. Our sages say that sleep is one-sixtieth of death. I suppose waiting may feel like even more than that because it's the inability to move, to advance while being fully conscious. It's hard to think of anything more frustrating.

Yet there is another way to look at it. A person who wants to do teshuvah is like a seed planted in the ground. A lot of what used to make up their personality will have to fall away, to die in a sense, before they'll be able to truly come close to Hashem. And yes, this will take time - a lot of time, during which they won't necessarily feel that they're getting any closer to their goal. But in the end they'll feel that it was all worth it - when they finally emerge as a beautiful, mighty tree, growing and blossoming under the loving rays of Hashem's sun. Without the long wait, it just wouldn't be possible. 

This opens us up to another facet of waiting. If we rearrange the letters of the word המתן, we'll get the word מתנה ("gift").

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