When I woke up on Tuesday morning, I had lots of muscles aches in my lower back and arms and yet I was happy about it.
The day before I had shoveled half my driveway with one of my sons over the course of an hour, and today's muscle pains were a result of that and made me happy since it felt good to know that I had had a good workout.
As many of you surely know, muscle soreness after exercise is a sign that you're getting stronger, and is nothing to be concerned about. The reason for this is since during exercise we stress our muscles and cause the fibers to begin to break down. Yet most importantly as the fibers begin to repair themselves they become larger and stronger than they were before and enable us to do even more than before.
Knowing what the pain meant, caused me to look forward to doing the shoveling of the outdoor stairwell of the Chabad Center and get my next workout.
Of course, what is true regarding muscles is true regarding our spiritual and moral growth. Hard work and self discipline in behavior modification, or pushing oneself to spend more time learning or doing more meaningful and deeper things for others or yourself, may at first be very hard and even painful in some ways. Yet when we bear in mind the greater good that we are accomplishing and where we are getting as a result, the difficulties of the hard work, can become bearable and perhaps even empowering to grow and do better.
Indeed, this is one of the tremendous gifts that we read about in this week's Torah portion, as we read about the gift of the Ten Commandments and the giving of the Torah. This was not simply a one time historic experience that would be spoken of over the course of history. Rather, G-d was giving a gift of meaning, that would be an ongoing workout of growth oriented living that would help cultivate and build better people and as a result a better world.
Let's keep working those muscles both physical and spiritual and do it with the knowledge that the hard work that we are doing,, even if it is a little painful and difficult, is making us stronger and better and improving the world around us.
Good Shabbos & Shabbat Shalom
Yisroel