They have experiences. They have connections. They work hard.
And yet they cannot find the reason they are stuck.
Then someone else comes along and sees a solution nobody else saw.
Why?
This week’s Torah portion teaches a powerful lesson.
The spies who went into the Land of Israel saw giants, obstacles, and challenges.
They were not wrong. The challenges were real.
Their mistake was believing that what they saw was the entire story.
Joshua and Caleb saw the same giants.
The same challenges. The same obstacles.
But they asked a different question.
The spies asked:
“What can we do?”
Joshua and Caleb asked:
”What can G-d do through us?”
That changed everything.
King Solomon teaches us a profound idea:
“For G-d gives wisdom.”
Think about that.
He doesn’t say that G-d gives money.
He doesn’t say that G-d gives success.
He says that G-d gives wisdom.
Before G-d sends success, he gives us the idea.
If G-d is the source of wisdom, then our job is to connect to the Source.
Many times, the answers we are looking for are already there.
We simply need to reconnect to the source of wisdom ( Torah ) in order to see them.
Rabbeinu Bachya, in The Gate of Trust, teaches one of the most powerful lessons about life.
When a person trusts only himself, his intelligence, his talents, his experience, and leaves G-d out of the picture, something surprising happens.
He doesn’t just lose G-d’s help.
He begins to lose his creativity.
His ideas become weaker.
His clarity becomes weaker.
His ability to see solutions becomes weaker.
In simple words:
He loses access to his creative mind.
Not because he became less intelligent.
But because he disconnected from the source of wisdom itself.
Rabbi Garelik, the Chabad emissary in Milan, once shared that when he first began his work, he would write to the Rebbe with every question and every challenge.
One day, the Rebbe told him:
“How long will I have to carry you and answer every question for you?”
The Rebbe encouraged him to do something different.
When you have a doubt how to move forward stop, learn, and think Chassidus.
Study a chapter of Tanya. A discourse of the Rebbe.
Think deeply.
Then look at the situation again and then you’ll see the answer in front of you.
When a person connects to G-d’s wisdom,the answer becomes clear.
The Rebbe taught us.
If G-d placed you in a particular family, a particular community, gave you a particular job, it is because He already gave you the ability to succeed in this environment.
G-d never places a person in a situation without also giving them the strength to succeed.
Our job is to ask:
“What does G-d want from me right now?”
When we connect to the source and we learn Torah, we begin to see possibilities that were always there.
Exercise of the week
This week, ask yourself two simple questions:
1. What do I see right now?
What are the obstacles?
What are the fears?
2. What am I not seeing right now?
What opportunity may be hidden here?
Sometimes the difference between:
“We can’t do it”
and
“We can do it”
is simply what we have not seen yet.
———
Kabbalah in 5
5 minutes. Live on WhatsApp.
Mondays 8:00–8:05 AM
To see answers Hashem puts in front of us each day.
Rabbi Zalman Gansburg
Chabad of Palmetto Bay