You Can’t Control It All

by Rabbi Chanoch Hecht

There is a famous Yiddish saying, “mentsh tract un Gut lacht” Loosely translated as, “Man plans and G-d laughs”. A recent event illustrates this all too well.

This past week we saw something astonishing unfold in front of our eyes; a volcano in Iceland erupted and the wind carried and spread the volcanic ash all over Europe.

As a result of this, thousands of flights were cancelled, air travel shut down, people got stranded-the world came to some sort of standstill as far as air travel was concerned. Affecting airlines in the worst possible way, this volcano has cost them millions of dollars in losses.

The masses started to panic: how will they get from point A to point B? Not being able to fly from one continent to another had suddenly become a catastrophe.

Living in the 21st century has its advantages of course. We can build a house in a matter of days; we can fly across the globe in a matter of hours; we can research something online and get all the information we need in a matter of minutes without even leaving the confines of our home. Because of all these possibilities, we live our lives as if all the power is in our hands, as if we are in total control of the situation.

Most people I know plan their lives ahead for the upcoming months, if not years. They know what their schedules are, where their children will be going to camp and where they are going for their next vacation well ahead of time. If you ask them to picture their lives in a year from now, most of them will answer swiftly and to the point. They have it all figured it out. Or at the very least, if they don’t already, they are trying to, thinking they can.

I find myself asking whether this is a sign of lack of faith. Does all this planning and preparing mean we think we are in control of everything in our routines down to the minute detail? We expect everything will go according to our plan, the way we want it to.

What if this volcano (and other natural occurrences) was a message from G-D to remind us that we are not the all-controlling, that there is a higher power? A reminder that He is in control and we are not? I think it was.

It is easy to get lost in our daily lives and to forget just how lucky we are with our mundane routines. GD can change all of that in the blink of an eye. We need to appreciate what we have on a daily basis, and remember that everything we have comes from The Almighty above.

I have no doubt that the volcanic ash has dozens of messages, a different one for each of us. But for me, one of the major ones is this: In all our planning, we must always remember that there is a GD and including Him in our plans should be a given.