I spent the week vacationing with my family in Knysna, South Africa, with plans to travel to Cape Town on Thursday—a drive of six or seven hours. Mid-drive we were running low on gas, so I planned to stop at the next gas station, fill up the tank, and give the kids a chance to get out and stretch their legs. Twenty minutes later we finally spotted one, but I was too far across the highway to get to the exit in time.
I moved over to the slow lane and stayed there until we next chanced upon a gas station, about half an hour later, in a town called Heidelberg. I paid for gas and purchased some snacks for the kids, and just as we were piling into the car to continue on our way someone tapped me on the shoulder and said “shalom aleichem” in a heavy South African accent.
It was Moshe and his wife Susan, excited to see other Jews in this far-flung town, hundreds of miles from South Africa’s established Jewish communities. Moshe gladly took the opportunity to put on tefillin, explaining that he had not done so in years. The more we talked, the more I realized why we had missed that first turn on the highway. It may have gotten us to a gas station thirty minutes earlier, but we would have missed out on the opportunity to meet Moshe and Susan. It’s always refreshing to see Divine providence so clearly at work!
In a sense, we’re all on a fast-moving highway: the highway of life. With the High Holidays on the horizon, it’s time to re-evaluate which way we are driving down that highway. Are we heading the right way? Are we traveling in the direction that will take us to where we need to be spiritually? Or are driving just as fast in the opposite direction, away from all that is holy and important?
If you discover you’re headed in the wrong direction, even if you’ve been driving that way for months or years, it’s not too late. You don’t need to reach your destination before the High Holidays, you just need to make the decision and turn the car around. You have plenty of time to forge ahead, but the first, most important, and most difficult step is to acknowledge that you’ve been going the wrong way, and to take that first step in the right direction. With four weeks to go, surely we can all manage to do that.