The Opportunity That Was Never Meant to Be

One of the hardest experiences in life is watching an opportunity that we almost had slip away. A person may have worked so hard for something, and everything seemed to be falling into place, only for it to disappear at the very last minute. At that moment, it feels as if we lost something that was meant to be ours. That is precisely when we need to dig deep and access our emunah, trusting that not only was it not meant for us, but it would have been the worst thing for us to have. Rabbi Yaakov Tzvi Meir Ehrlich related the following story. A heartbroken man came to him. He had been living in a tiny apartment for a long time and had finally found what seemed to be the perfect house. He had already spoken with the owner, and everything looked very promising. The real estate agent told him that another buyer had made an offer, but if he would submit a bid that was even one euro higher, the house would be his. The man was thrilled. He prepared all the paperwork, and on Friday, just before faxing in his proposal, something very unusual happened. The papers suddenly became soaked, the writing smudged, and he had to start all over again. Time passed, and he realized he was not going to finish before Shabbat. His wife told him, "Shabbat is almost here. Put everything away. You'll continue afterward." She wanted the house just as much as he did, but she wanted to honor Shabbat even more. Together they put everything aside and welcomed the Shabbat. After Shabbat, he contacted the agent only to hear the disappointing news. The house had been sold to the other buyer. The man was devastated. "Maybe I should have ignored the clock and kept writing," he asked the rabbi. The rabbi comforted him. "Don't you see that Hashem orchestrated this? Is it natural for the papers to become ruined at the exact moment you were about to send them? You don't yet understand why, but you can be certain that this house was not good for you." The rabbi later related that after telling this story to a man sitting next to him on an airplane, the passenger replied, "Please tell that Jew my story. He doesn't yet know the happy ending to his, but I was privileged to see mine." This man then related that seventeen years earlier, he had wanted to buy a beautiful apartment in Herzliya. The negotiations dragged on until they finally agreed on a price. Then the Second Lebanon War broke out, and the seller became willing to accept his offer. The agreement came during the Nine Days, and before signing, he asked his rabbi, Rabbi Yosef Cohen, what to do. His rabbi told him, "Do not sign during the Nine Days. Wait until the fifteenth of Av." He listened. But by the time the fifteenth of Av arrived, the war had ended, the prices had risen again, and the owner refused to sell the apartment for that price. The deal fell apart. The man was crushed. After spending six months in Eretz Yisrael hoping to buy an apartment, he returned home empty-handed. Some time later, he returned to Herzliya to continue looking. He told the new agent, "Please don't take me down the street where the first apartment I almost bought is. It will hurt too much to see it." The agent tried to avoid that street, but by mistake they found themselves there. Unable to resist, the man glanced toward the house and froze. The house wasn't there. It was just an empty lot. The agent asked, "That was the apartment you almost bought? Didn't you hear what happened?" After the new owner began renovating, an architect discovered that the entire structure was dangerously unsound. The municipality declared it unsafe, and the house had to be demolished completely. The buyer, who thought he had purchased a beautiful home, suffered an enormous financial loss and tremendous aggravation. At that moment, the man realized that what had seemed like his greatest disappointment had actually been one of Hashem's greatest acts of kindness towards him. How many times in life do we cry over opportunities that we think we lost? The job that didn't work out, the house that someone else got, the investment we couldn't make, or the