“It was when G-d destroyed the cities of the plain and G-d remembered Avraham and He sentLotout from the midst of the upheaval”

(Bereishis 19:29)

What did (Hashem) remember about Lot? He remembered that Lotwas silent when Avraham said about Sarai “She is my sister” and he knew (the truth) and remained silent. (Bereishis Rabbah 51:6)

This requires some explanation.Lot in Sdom fulfilled the mitzvah of extending hospitality with genuine self-sacrifice to the point of risking his life. With such tremendous merits why did he need the merit of his silence to be saved?

The merit of Lot’s mesirus nefesh for chesed (in Sdom) seems to be much greater than the merit of his remaining silent which was just passivity refraining from informing on Avraham and having him killed after Avraham had been so kind to him.… There doesn’t seem much to praise about this since he would never commit such a grave injustice.… All the more so he should have been saved because he risked his life for chesed. (Rabbi Aharon Kotler Mishnas Rabbi Aharon)

Really would anyone have said “She isn’t his sister; she’s his wife!”? That would have been tantamount to saying “Please kill Avraham my uncle and benefactor.” What was so great aboutLot’s remaining silent?

Sometimes we’re amazed to see women calmly sitting atop mountains we’ve been struggling to climb for decades. “How?” we ask in pained disbelief. “How did they get there while we’re so far down here?” On the mountains I try to climb you can see the indentations made by my efforts by my steady advancement and conquest of one step after another yet also my difficulties and falls.

There’s one mountain I struggle to climb every day at 6 p.m. as small sweaty people stream in from the park and backyard needing supper baths and bedtimes. For some reason those three simple tasks become major battles along with suddenly remembered homework and games there’s no time to play accompanied by varying amounts of requests shouts promises and threats.

But at this same time each day one neighbor always uses a calm tone of voice from the beginning of the evening until its end. She happily reads stories serves dinner and doesn’t lose control if a child asks for a drink three times. No shouts or screams from her house. How could this be?

I have a cousin who doesn’t understand how anyone can possibly speak lashon hara. It doesn’t even interest her why this one’s daughter got divorced or how that one’s son has so much money.

Atop the mountain sit women who are always quick to get things done always kind to their difficult neighbor pure as crystal in every way.

What about the rest of us?

I heard from the Alter ztz”l that Lot’s act of inviting guests was just an imitation of what he’d seen from Avraham but it wasn’t his true level. In terms of his actual self Lot was only on the level at which he would not commit a grave transgression that would cause Avraham’s death and therefore this helped him more. (ibid.)

Lotwas an incredible baal chesed in Sdom. But these were character traits he absorbed in Avraham’s house without any particular effort. It was only his silence at the Egyptian border that took effort; for Lot it was a genuine act of self-control. And when he needed a merit that basic act he struggled with was greater than all the chesed he’d done effortlessly.

Certainly every good deed is considered infinitely valuable on its own even more so if a person thereby breaks his own will and defies the forces within him and how much more so when it represents a tremendous nisayon. (ibid.)

Just 15 minutes of hard-won shmiras halashon can be greater than a natural silence of months. One swallowed shout one smile to a coworker you can’t stand can go much further than all the good words spoken by someone who doesn’t know how to fight. These are merits for us because we do know how.

We can’t compare ourselves to others looking despairingly at the people far ahead of us. Who knows how they got there? On these mountains the only thing we need note is how far we’ve already come and how hard we’ve worked to get here … and then to keep climbing.