As I awoke this morning I was thrilled. I was going to be the sandak for a couple celebrating the bris of their first child — after being married for six years.

They’d traveled a long and arduous path to arrive at this day. They didn’t marry young and even after finding each other they struggled through years of infertility and disappointments. If there was one feeling that filled me this morning it was a sense of the benevolence and the compassion of He who rules all. All the tefillos and tears that had poured from hearts and eyes beseeching and begging Hashem had found their mark. He who “runs the show” had orchestrated a miracle.

At the bris I spoke of the need for all of us to recognize and internalize that. “He and He alone runs the show and He and He alone decides where and when the actors on His stage will perform.”

As I was leaving the bris the mohel reminded me that since I’d been sandak it was a private Yom Tov for me and I shouldn’t say tachanun at Minchah.

As the day continued I prepared for the next simchah of the day a wedding inMonseyNew York.

Ah the life of a rabbi.

I was scheduled to read the kesubah at the chasunah at 6 be back in Passaic for a meeting at 7:15 daven Minchah followed by the shiur I give in Ein Yaakov at 8:15 give my women’s weekly parshah class at 8:45 and finally meet with a couple at 9:45. I knew that if I left the wedding by 6:40 I’d for sure be back in Passaic at 7:15 and everything would fall into the neat box. I just knew it.

As I exited the wedding hall in Monsey I was quite confident my schedule would go as planned. I’ve made the trip from Monsey to Passaic countless times it takes no more than 35 minutes and it’s one of those drives I can do with “my eyes closed” as they say.

I drove along fully enjoying the beautiful spring weather. A little too fully. The signs forAlbanyshould have been my first warning sign; they weren’t. The signs for the Catskills should have caused alarm bells to sound; they didn’t. When I arrived at the Sloatsburg rest area however I finally realized I’d driven 20 miles north instead of south.

It was clear my first appointment had to be canceled and I wouldn’t be in shul for Minchah. When I was finally heading south again the Memorial Day traffic jams delayed me even more. Somewhere on the Garden State Parkway I pulled into a rest stop just in time to daven Minchah outside a Starbucks as the sun set over the grassy knolls surrounding the parkway.

Just as I was finishing Shemoneh Esrei I recalled my words from the bris uttered 12 hours before and miles away that “He alone runs the show.” Today there would be no Ein Yaakov shiur; if I arrived home in time to give my women’s class I’d be grateful.

“He and He alone runs the show” I’d confidently stated. What in the morning was pure lip service was in the evening a service of the heart.