“Everything in life is min haShamayim. And that’s why you heard me saying this. Because no one knows this better than I do”

The Background

Reb Eli Stefansky is a good friend and the founder of Mercaz Daf Yomi. He told me this story about an encounter with a Ben-Gurion Airport employee that taught him a profound lesson about the power of Hashgachah pratis.

WE moved from Chicago to Ramat Beit Shemesh about ten years ago, and we fly back to the States often to see family. My wife and I had just arrived at Ben-Gurion Airport for one such trip when we learned that our flight to Chicago would be delayed for a long time.

“We’ll be here for hours,” my wife said when we found out. She was understandably upset, and it was up to me to find the words to make her feel better.

“I have no idea why our flight is delayed, but Hashem certainly knows,” I said. “It’s min haShamayim. We don’t see it now, but it’s the best possible thing that could happen to us.”

Just as those words left my mouth, two airport employees walked by us. A snippet of their conversation caught my ear — one of the men was saying that “everything that happens in life is min haShamayim.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing — the timing was absolutely uncanny — and I couldn’t just let this opportunity slip by.

I called out to the man who’d said those words, “Sorry to interrupt your conversation, but I happened to overhear you saying that everything in life is min haShamayim.”

He slowed down and nodded.

I told him I had just said the same thing to my wife, and obviously, this didn’t happen by accident.

“There must be a reason I heard those exact words as you walked by. Do you have a story? What is it?”

He said he did, and he proceeded to share it with me. Here is the Ben Gurion employee’s story:

I remember this like it happened yesterday. I was in the middle of training to become a pilot in the Israeli Air Force. A month before I was supposed to start my active service, I was driving, when a truck ran a red light.

Have you ever been in a car crash? Everything goes in slow motion. I felt the collision and the car spinning out, but it was like I was watching it happen to someone else.

Everything came to a stop. In the silence, I realized I was unhurt. I managed to open the car door and climb out on my own two feet.

I turned to look at the car. It was crushed, completely totaled. I stood there staring at it.

I should have been killed.

There were voices and sirens — people couldn’t believe I was okay; it was a clear miracle.

“I need to call my father,” I said.

Someone placed a phone in my hand, and I dialed his number.

“Abba, it’s me, are you sitting down? I was just in a terrible car accident.”

“What?! What happened? Are you all right? How are you talking to me?!”

“Abba, it’s a miracle. The car is totaled, but I’m fine. I got out without a scratch.”

I waited for my father’s jubilant reaction — but he was silent.

“Abba, why aren’t you saying anything?”

Finally, my father spoke.

“I want you to go to the hospital and get yourself checked out.”

“Abba, I’m fine. The car is a wreck but I’m totally okay.”

“Even so,” my father insisted. “I want you to go to the hospital right now and have the doctors examine you.”

I really didn’t want to go; I felt fine, I was a young man in excellent health, and I knew there was nothing wrong with me. But my father made me promise I would go, so I did. I had to wait a while, of course, until a doctor finally saw me and examined me from head to toe.

Guess what? He found a brain tumor.

Here, my new friend showed me the scar on his head where the surgeons had operated on him all those years ago; it spanned his entire head, ear to ear.

“Of course that meant I couldn’t be a pilot,” he said. “But I was able to serve my country in other ways. More important — I was able to live a full and happy life. And from everything that happened to me — the accident, my survival, the doctor finding the tumor — I learned a very important lesson. Everything in life is min haShamayim. And that’s why you heard me saying this. Because no one knows this better than I do.”

We parted ways, and my wife and I waited a few more hours for our flight. But at least now we knew why.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1024)