This Yom Kippur eve during the evening service, I got to a point in my prayers where I realized that there were things I had done during the past year for which the punishment was death (by Torah law). DEATH!
Needless to say, I was pretty shaken up.
I finished my silent Amidah prayer, went to a back room in the shul where I was praying, and proceeded to cry my eyes out… because I knew that although G-d loves me, He wants me to live, and He will give me all the time I need to rectify my mistakes, I will still need to answer eventually for what I had done, the way things stood at that moment. The terrible realization that my life was hanging in the balance caused me to weep like a child.
And G-d responded…
…by making sure there was a box of tissues waiting on a chair right next to where I was sitting in that back room.
He really does love me.
Submitted by Shlomo Chaim Zehnwirth
