353. Sustenance (4)

All people who enter the world will testify that since Hashem is the One who gives all of the force to perform anything, and He is the One who feeds and sustains everything, it is absolutely impossible and completely unthinkable that He would give more to those who transgress His will so that they will gain from their sins, whereas to those who perform His will He will give less so that they lose out by performing His will. It is obvious that this cannot be the case. Even though every member of Klal Yisrael believes in this, there are nevertheless some who are completely given over to their evil inclination and do not leave their evil customs and transgress their own will and that of their Creator even though they are completely convinced that it will not succeed and that they will end up being punished for it, and that there is a great reward for the righteous in both this world and the next and that there is a bad bitter punishment for the wicked. Even with all of this knowledge they do not strengthen themselves to fight against their evil inclination to go in good ways and to do that which is good and correct.

On the other hand, the ideal Jew will reflect upon the fact that the coming of a person to this world is only to fight against the evil inclination and to conquer it, and by doing this he creates great pleasure to his Creator and will receive great reward in this world and the next for all of his travail, for what is the point for a person in all of the toil that he performs and the effort that he makes to become rich by transgressing prohibitions and uprooting prayers and positive commandments, when he knows full well that he will not be successful and that he will have to give a full accounting before the King of all kings, The Holy One Blessed be he. It follows that a person should strengthen himself to fight with his desires and perform only that which is good in this world so that his soul will have pleasure in the pastures in the next, and this is all of man. One should always request mercy from He who owns all of the wealth for prayer achieves much. Every day he should pray for sustenance in the blessing of “Shome’a Tefillah” and before each time that he eats. He should concentrate intensely on every blessing on enjoyment and especially on the grace after meals to say them with the full concentration letter by letter word by word, and he should especially concentrate when saying the verse “You open Your hand and satisfy the will of all living creatures!”, for sustenance really depends on these things.