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Thought for the Day: Yisurim Are M'chaper!!

I know it has been a few days... I plan to try and do doubles some days to catch up.  Today, though, I had to get at least this one thought out.  I was biking to work this morning and had taken my wife's iPod nano that has shiurim on them  We don't usually listen to the same kinds of shiurim but I haven't reloaded mine and it has been a while since I had listened to anything, and yada, yada, yada.  My wife very much likes R' Mizrachi, even though he tends to make his points with very sharp and sometimes extreme examples.  Hard to argue with, because he is right and right on target, but you know the type.  Anyway, this morning's shiur was on how suffering is a big benefit.  He was in the middle of a story about how even the littlest irritation can be when I rode my bike through a red light.  Hey!  There was no one there, no traffic at all; in fact, its practically a mitzvah because that way I don't hold up traffic.  So... it seems I missed one thing; a policeman standing right in front of me.  He directed me to the curb where a nice young lady handed me a flyer about how bikes must obey traffic signals.

I try to at least pretend that I pay attention to these shiurim, so I took the flyer and said thank you.  The young lady had a whole speech, and I just kept saying, "you're right, I was wrong".  As I rode away I also thanked the police officer (who ignored me).  What a bracha!  It could just as easily have been a car that I missed seeing; which would not have been as gentle about motioning me to the curb.  Baruch HaShem!  So the rest of the trip to work I hit a red on nearly every signal.  I just repeated, "yisurim are m'chaper" and a little yisurim with a little t'shuva can take the place of a lot of yisruim.  I also kept in mind "dina malchusa dina" (the rational laws of the state are halachichly binding); that way I was fulfilling a mitzvah with each stop.  I also repeated HRTW (HaShem runs the world), so I also worked on my emuna.  All told, I had a very fruitful ride to work this morning.
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