Teshuvah Stories

Teshuvah & Brand New Walls

                    There is a story about a boy who was a horrible kid, always causing trouble to his parents. Every time the kid would do something bad, the parents would go into a room in the house and put a nail into the wall. Next to the nail, the parents would right down what the kid did wrong. After a while, the walls were filled with nails and the parents brought the kid into the room. The boy ran up to the nails and read the bad things that he had done, he could not believe it! “I never did this!”, he exclaimed and started to cry. He felt horrible, but the father told him that every day the kid would go without doing something wrong he would take out a nail. The boy started to act very well, and after a while, the nails were gone.

                      The parent brought the child back into the room and showed him the walls. The boy felt the walls and started to cry, “but there are still holes in the walls, and they were made because of me.” The father said, “don’t worry my son, I’m going to break these walls and build brand new walls.On Yom Kippur, G-d gives us a new chance. He gives us a chance to break down those old walls, walls filled with holes from our sins and build new ones. A person who has done teshuva has built new walls for himself. Be'ezrat Hashem, we should all tear down our old walls and build new ones and in this merit Moshiach should come speedily in our times amen!

                     A boy sent a letter to the Steipler Gaon , telling the Steipler that he was in Yeshiva, and has done many sins and he is sure that Hashem has abandoned him and doesn't love him anymore. The Stipler wrote back and told the boy know that Hashem never gives up on anyone and through the power of Torah you can fix anything you did wrong. Torah is THAT powerful!!! It cleanses the Neshama!

How To Merit Eternity

There is a story told about a boy who was living a double life. By day, he was a Yeshiva student learning morning and afternoon seder in a yeshiva, and by night, he was a drummer in one of the biggest clubs in town. He was a very talented drummer. One day, an agent comes to him and wants to promote him to try out and play with a big band. This was his big chance! So he went to New York, played his heart out and got a contract to be a backup drummer for a very famous band. This was the greatest thing to ever happen to him! But there was one thing; the first night they were playing on was a Friday night. Now, he’s in a huge dilemma and he doesn’t even know what to do. He goes to a rabbi and tells him the whole story. The rabbi tells him to take out a piece of paper and on one side he should write the pros of playing on Shabbat and on the other side, the cons of playing on Shabbat. He tells the rabbi he needs time to think about it and that he’ll come back in a couple of days. When he comes back to the rabbi, he shows the rabbi the paper. On the pro side, there was everything you could imagine: money, fame,and all the pleasures of the world. The pro side was huge! On the con side there was one word written: ETERNITY. “That’s why I can’t do it” he says. “Eternity is just too big to lose”.

Eternity is in each and every one of our grasps. Rav Dessler gives a parable on how big eternity is. Imagine you have a mountain of sand as big as Mt. Everest. Once every thousand years, a bird comes by and takes one of the grains of sand and drops it into the ocean. As many years as it takes for all the grains of sand to finish, that’s not even close to what eternity is!