Parnasah Is a Mission, Not a Possession

As we know, parnasah comes from Hashem, and the Chovot HaLevavot in Shaar HaBitachon, perek 4, gives us a very important understanding of how Hashem distributes it in the world. He writes that Hashem guarantees enough sustenance for every person as long as he is meant to live in this world. Every person has what he needs to survive because Hashem Himself takes responsibility for all of His creations. But not everyone is given the role of supporting others. Sometimes Hashem chooses certain people to become His messengers. If a man is given enough to support not only himself, but also his wife and children, then Hashem has placed their parnasah into his hands. He put their sustenance into his bank account and appointed him as the messenger to deliver it. This is both a tremendous zechut and a tremendous test. It is a zechut because there are few greater privileges than being entrusted by Hashem to care for His children. But it is also a test: will the person believe that the money is his and that he is generously sharing from his own possessions? Or will he recognize that it was never truly his at all? Hashem simply designated him to distribute what was already meant for them. If a person is blessed with extra, he should feel honored that Hashem chose him for that mission. He should support his family happily, not feeling as if he is carrying a burden, and not expecting recognition or praise. He is merely carrying out the task Hashem assigned him. And a person must know that Hashem never needs him specifically. Hashem has endless ways of supporting every individual. Even one's own family can be supported through channels no one ever imagined. I know of a man who struggles financially while his own young children have far more money than he does. A relative placed large sums of money into trust funds for them. Hashem has countless messengers and countless ways of providing what people need. Of course, we are obligated to make hishtadlut. A person must work and make a normal effort. But he should not feel that if he does not earn what he expected to, the weight of the world is resting on his shoulders. Hashem never intended hishtadlut to become endless pressure and worry. A person does not need to spend his life anxiously calculating how his children will survive years into the future. That burden belongs to Hashem. People who believe all the money Hashem gives them is solely for their own use often make another mistake. They keep chasing and accumulating more and more, imagining that the goal of life is to see how much wealth they can build. But the Chovot HaLevavot explains that there is no such thing as extra hishtadlut creating wealth. If wealth is decreed for a person, he will receive it through his normal efforts. And if it is not decreed, no matter how much harder he works, he will never attain it. The goal of life is not to see how much money a person can make. It is to make what he needs and use the precious extra time Hashem gives him to serve Him through Torah and mitzvot. A woman shared a story that brought out one of these lessons. She was preparing for maternity leave and knew that the government calculated maternity pay based on the average salary from the previous three months. One of those months included Pesach, and because of the Yom Tov days she had worked far fewer hours than usual. She became worried. She tried putting in some extra hours, but there was no way to make up all the missing time. Then she heard a class explaining that parnasah only comes from Hashem and that extra hours do not automatically create extra money. The words gave her tremendous chizuk. She accepted that Hashem knew exactly what she needed and exactly how much she was supposed to receive. Just a few hours later, someone from HR contacted her. They told her that months earlier she had referred an employee to the company but had never received the referral bonus she was owed. Since they had discovered the oversight, they were adding the payment into her next paycheck. The timing was remarkable. It was the second-to-last day of April. And the amount of that bonus was exactly what she had been missing because of the Pesach hours. She felt as if Hashem was speaking directly to her: "I know exactly what you need. I know how to take care of you." When we internalize that parnasah comes from Hashem and understand how He distributes it, life becomes calmer. We stop carrying burdens that were never ours to carry, and we become better equipped to pass the tests that come our way.