By Rabbi Chanan Gordon

I had just landed back in Los Angeles after a recent trip to Florida when I looked at my phone and saw a message from an old friend, Rabbi Shlomo/Steve Baars.

There are messages you read and respond to. There are messages you read and forget. And then there are messages that cause the world around you to suddenly become very quiet. This was one of those messages.

Within a few seconds of listening to the WhatsApp voicemail from Rabbi Baars, I realized that something was terribly wrong. Steve and I have both done a fair amount of stand-up comedy in our day, and the first few seconds of almost all our messages to each other over the years inevitably included a witty comment. There was no humor in this message.

The message informed me that he was in Johns Hopkins Hospital. Doctors had discovered yener machlah in his brain. The prognosis, as he described it, was poor.

I stared at my phone.

Those of us who know Rabbi Baars know a man who has spent decades teaching Jews how to think differently about life—how to see beyond the superficial, how to recognize purpose where others see randomness, and how to discover Hashem behind the curtain of everyday existence.

And now he was being asked to live everything he had spent a lifetime teaching. What shook me almost as much as the diagnosis was the thrust of the rest of his message.

To paraphrase the heart-wrenching message from Steve: The doctors have their prognosis. The doctors have their statistics. The doctors have their scans. But the doctors are not in charge. Hashem is.

That was the message.

While reviewing this week’s parsha, I realized that Steve’s message echoes inside Parshas Ki Seitzei.

The Torah tells us: “Ki seitzei lamilchomah al oyvecha—When you go out to war against your enemies.”

The Torah could have said ki tilochem—when you fight. Instead, it says ki seitzei—when you go out.

So much of life is about how we go out to meet what awaits us. We do not get to choose every battlefield. We do not choose every diagnosis. We do not choose every financial challenge, family crisis, disappointment, betrayal, or frightening phone call. But we do choose Who we believe accompanies us onto the battlefield.

And then come some of the most important words in the posuk: “Unesano Hashem Elokecha b’yodecha—Hashem will deliver the enemy into your hands.”

The Torah is reminding us of something that modern life constantly causes us to forget: Human beings are required to act, but human beings do not control outcomes.

We confuse hishtadlus with control. They are not the same thing. A doctor must practice medicine with every ounce of wisdom Hashem has given him. A patient must seek the finest medical care available. We undergo the scans. We take the medication. We consult the specialists. But after all the appointments, expertise, technology, and statistics, there remains one truth that no MRI machine can photograph, and the life philosophy of my dear chaver, Rabbi Shlomo Baars, personifies it: The Ribbono Shel Olam is still running the world.

Doctors diagnose. Doctors treat. Doctors estimate. But doctors do not write the final chapter. Hashem does.

Here is what I found so extraordinary about Rabbi Baars’ message. It would be understandable for someone receiving such news to suddenly discover emunah. There are no atheists in foxholes, as the saying goes. But there was something deeper here.

A man was effectively being presented with what, according to the natural order of things, sounded frighteningly close to a death sentence, and rather than allowing the prognosis to define reality, he was reminding others that the prognosis was not reality.

The doctors knew the medicine. He knew the Doctor. Not as a substitute for medicine, but as the ultimate Source behind it.

Perhaps the greatest tragedy is that most of us need a crisis before we understand this. We wake up tomorrow morning assuming that there will be another morning after it. We walk downstairs assuming that our legs will carry us. We call our children assuming that  they will answer. We complain about our spouse, our job, traffic, delayed flights, an annoying WhatsApp message, and the person who took too long in front of us at Starbucks.

Why?

Because somewhere along the way, we started treating miracles as entitlements. The first time a baby takes a step, everyone cheers. By the time that child is forty, nobody applauds when he walks across the room.

What changed?

Nothing about the miracle changed. We simply became accustomed to it. That may be one of the most dangerous spiritual diseases of all: becoming accustomed to our blessings.

We call it “normal.” There is nothing normal about opening your eyes in the morning. There is nothing normal about your heart beating more than 100,000 times every day without you issuing a single instruction. There is nothing normal about hugging a child. There is nothing normal about hearing someone you love laugh. There is nothing normal about another Shabbos table.

These things are not ordinary. They are gifts that became familiar. And familiarity has an astonishing ability to turn gifts into expectations. This is why a person can spend years complaining about his life—until one doctor’s appointment suddenly makes yesterday’s “problems” look like blessings.

Chazal teach us that the Torah’s language of war can also be understood as the ongoing battle within the human being. Perhaps one of the yeitzer hora’s greatest victories is not convincing us that Hashem does not exist. It is convincing us to live as though we have unlimited time.

Tomorrow I’ll call him. Tomorrow I’ll apologize. Tomorrow I’ll start learning. Tomorrow I’ll spend more time with my children. Tomorrow I’ll stop worrying about what everyone thinks. Tomorrow I’ll start appreciating my spouse. Tomorrow I’ll start living.

And then, one day, Hashem reminds us that tomorrow was never part of the contract.

Ki Seitzei teaches us to go out into the battle of life knowing from the outset that the outcome belongs to Hashem. Not only when the oncologist walks into the room. Not only when the bank account is empty. Not only when the airplane hits turbulence. Not only when our illusion of control has been shattered. Every day.

That is the challenge: to have the clarity of the hospital room while sitting comfortably in our living room. To have the gratitude of the survivor before we become the survivor. To say Modeh Ani tomorrow morning and stop for three seconds to contemplate what we are saying: Thank You for giving me back my life.

Rabbi Baars’ message was a wake-up call for me. Not because I needed to contemplate his mortality, but because I needed to contemplate my own life—the kind of questions we all should contemplate in the month of Elul.

Am I using the days Hashem gives me? Am I telling the people I love that I love them? Am I carrying resentments that suddenly would look embarrassingly insignificant if I knew I had six months left? Am I postponing things that matter while obsessing over things that don’t? Am I living according to what Hashem wants from me—or according to what will impress people who are themselves busy trying to impress somebody else?

We spend an astonishing amount of our lives preparing to live. When the business succeeds. When the kids get married. When I retire. When the problem gets resolved. When life settles down… Then I’ll be happy. Then I’ll have time. Then I’ll live.

But life is not waiting on the other side of our problems. This is life. This Thursday. This conversation. This Shabbos. This hug. This breath.

The great lesson Rabbi Baars reminded me of from his hospital room is not that we should live frightened because life is fragile. Quite the opposite. We should live awake because life is precious. There is an enormous difference. Fear says, “I could lose everything.” Emunah says, “Look at everything Hashem has given me today.”

Perhaps that is how a Jew walks onto every battlefield—ki seitzei lamilchomah.

We go out. We make our hishtadlus. We fight like everything depends upon us while knowing in our hearts that nothing ultimately depends upon us.

“Unesano Hashem Elokecha b’yodecha.” The outcome belongs to Him.

Rabbi Shlomo Baars does not know what tomorrow will bring. Neither do I. Neither do you. The difference is that sometimes a hospital room removes the illusion that we ever did.

May R’ Shlomo Asher ben Adina have a speedy refuah sheleimah b’soch she’ar cholei Yisroel and may the rest of us not require a frightening diagnosis to learn the lesson he had the clarity and courage to teach from his hospital bed:

The doctors are not in charge. The statistics are not in charge. We are not in charge. There is One Who is.

Once we truly understand that, we can stop being terrified of life and finally start appreciating every precious day of it.

Rabbi Chanan (Antony) Gordon can be reached at [email protected].