Hi all, I'm a new rambler, so... bear with me!
This past week I was trying to reach the guy who was lending me the schwarma machine for our Purim JAM and was becoming increasingly frustrated and even offended as my number of unreturned calls mounted. Tuesday morning he finally called me back from Miami, explaining that he'd been in Israel for 10 days. He got me the machine and couldn't have been nicer. I regretted not having judged him favorably, and resolved to be better at incorporating this Jewish value of giving others the benefit of the doubt in my interpersonal relationships.
Great.
The very next day, my good friend and JFX PIT member, Dan Weiss, aka the Caffeinated Crusader, posted a link on his Facebook page about how one family used this value as a merit to actually save a life. That same day, we received a pre-printed thank you card from a friend's son for a bar mitzvah gift. I'm not into the pre-printed thank you card thing, but my new resolve brought the following to my lips: maybe this child doesn't have the attention span to write out cards? Maybe the parents are willing to swallow what they would have wanted, to benefit their child?
(Is it a coincidence that Purim, the holiday of "coincidences," is around the corner? Or, as Yogi Berra might've said, maybe "there ain't no such thing as a coincidence"!)
Have a great Shabbos.
