whats up with the seven fat cows???

I just recieved this beautiful e mail to help us understand a really cool torah thought that I bet you never thought about in this way.

One of the many lessons that I have learned and want to address is: What is significant in having seven years of plenty fallowed by seven years of famine in Egypt? What can I learn from this to apply to my life?

I know that Hashem always has a master plan and everything works out, even if I don’t see it, and may never see it, but, if I know that it is true I can confidently say, Hashem gives me a tool box for every challenge before the challenge begins. So what was the years of plenty/wealth? They where the tool box given from Hashem, to prepare and stock up for the years of famine, so when the years of famine come the Mizriyim will be prepared and ready to deal with the challenge head on and not die of starvation.

However, there is one important key about human nature which is that people don’t generally see the years of plenty as a tool to use those years to stock up. Instead they live in the moment and never believe that the years of famine will come around. Then, when the years of famine come they are stuck. We see from the Torah that people tend not to notice the years of plenty but, only the years of famine from the fact that the Torah writes “ The years of famine began” but fails to mention that the years of plenty began.

When a person has good she must always remember to use it and cherish every moment because it will not last, as Chazal say “the world goes round and round.” The trick in life is to use those moment toward the future and think into the future. This way when the going gets tough she will have to resources to get through it. A person will not be successful if they don’t plan for the future but live in the moment, the right here right now attitude. A person must plan for the future as Shlomo Hamelech said: “Who is smart? The one who sees into the future.”

There was once a study done on ten children, they were each given his own bag of candy and then placed in a room. They were each given the option to either to eat the candy or wait two hours and at the end get a second bag. Seventy percent eat the one bag right away. All the children where tracked, and the ones that waited for the second bag were found to be very successful in their career. We see from this example, how hard it is to plan for the future but, how beneficial it is.

Another example in our Parsha where there was planning for the future was when Yosef had all of Egyptians have a Bris, so when we go to Egypt no, one will question the custom. This lesson of planning for the future carries over to every aspect of ones life. For example, school, diet, money, job, buying a house and so on. I would like to address two areas to apply it to my life now.

How can I plan for the future, so that when a challenge arises I will have to tool to cope? Now, school is over and I am entering a world where I won’t have an environment with constant inspiration at my finger tips. How will I insure my closeness with Hashem and continue learning if I’m not in classroom anymore every day? Where will I get inspiration from day to day? If I act now and take all that I am learning and save it, I will have it to pull out whenever I need to use it, so that I won’t be dry of spirituality. These last twelve years I have been in school have been the tool box, but, only if I use the tool box and recognize that it is a tool box. This is one example of using the idea of the seven years of plenty before the seven years of famine. Using the seven years of plenty before the famine so that I will be ready for the famine.

The second way that I can apply the same concept of thinking into the future is, there are many people that I meet in life everyday. New people, I have many interactions with many different people and I will never know if and how I will see them again and what significances they may play in my life. Therefore I can never make enemies and have to make sure to always give a proper impression, one that I would want to leave. The lady that I meet in the store might be my mother-in-law. Someone may call a person in the community and ask about me, this is also an example of planning for the future and not just living in the moment.
So I leaned from Chumash to always plan and think into the future because I can never know what Hashem will give me.

May you start to see how much good you are given in this world. And see that you have had so many fat cows in your life, not in your dreams.....