Have you ever finished a job, did the work, and then crickets? The invoice sits unpaid. The check that's apparently in the mail. There's a particular kind of frustration in having earned something and being told it's coming… eventually.
Buried in this week's Parshah among its seventy-four commandments, is one of the most human laws in the entire Torah: "Give him his wages on his day; do not let the sun set over it." Pay your workers the same day, don't make them wait. Here's where it gets interesting. Our Sages teach that G-d keeps His own commandments; everything He asks of us, He does Himself. However G-d, who legislated against making a worker wait, appears to keep His own workers waiting a whole lifetime and then some. What's going on? The answer is that we've been picturing ourselves as employees. We're not! G-d desired a home in the lowest place, down here, in this physical world where His presence is hidden. He handed the world over to us to make it into a place where He can live. That's not an employee's task. That's a partner. A partner has a stake in the outcome. Not just working for the prize but building the very thing they are going to share in. That's us. The big payoff, the profit that we split with G-d, comes at the end, in the World to Come. And what is it, exactly? Not a trophy handed to you for a job well done. “The reward of a mitzvah is the mitzvah." The closeness to G-d you create when you light a candle, give tzedakah, or sit with a friend who's hurting, that closeness is the wage. A partner doesn't get handed a prize separate from the business. They get to enjoy the very thing they built. A partner in the middle of building still has to eat. You can't tend the flock on an empty stomach. So along the way, right now, this week, G-d is obligated, so to speak, to pay us our "wages and sustenance." The health, the livelihood, the doors that open, the obstacles that quietly disappear are all daily paychecks. Not a bonus. It's what makes it possible for us to do the work. We're standing now in the month of Elul. Rosh Hashanah is a few weeks away. The judgment of Rosh Hashanah is, at its core, about the material; family, health, and sustenance. In the classic phrase: banei, chayei, umezonei. The confidence we walk into that judgment with: not as beggars hoping for a handout at the courthouse door, but as partners in building G-d's home. No one starves their partner in the middle of a project. G-d wants you to have what you need, in abundance, precisely so you can keep building. This Elul, don’t be the employee, grinding away, a little resentful, waiting for a payoff that feels perpetually delayed. Be the partner who understands that the work is the reward and that the paycheck arrives daily. Everything you've been given, your talents, your resources, the corner of the world that's yours, was handed to you for one reason: to build something with it. You were never just working for G-d, you were building with Him. Good Shabbos, Rabbi Kushi Schusterman
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Eric Aycock wrote...