I think most people would probably agree that the world feels like it’s spinning ‘out of control’ more and more, at the moment.

The way humans are built is that when the external chaos builds, we try to maintain order by taking more control of our immediate environments, to maintain the illusion that we are actually in charge.

Of course, we’re not. God is.

But really living that reality, as opposed to just talking about it, is a massive, huge challenge.

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Another facet of this is that acknowledging that God is really in control of everything doesn’t let us, or others, off the hook for our own bad behaviour and bad middot.

“Let go and let God” doesn’t equate to letting go of any responsibility for myself, or others, to do my maximum hishtadlut, to at least try to behave appropriately, make my best effort, do my bit, my part – although the outcome is 100% in God’s hands.

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Right now, everyone is pretty annoying.

There are annoying people driving the streets of Jerusalem, who are trying to ‘control’ the amount of time they spend in our awful traffic by pushing in, speeding, jumping the lights to get into your turning lane, last minute.

The line between ‘what I can do’ and ‘what I can’t do’ to stop all this is very hard to define.

Should I go all stubborn, bumper-to-bumper formation, to absolutely positively stop that a-hole from pushing in to a queue I’ve been stuck in for 20 minutes, inching forward obediently?

Or, should I accept ‘this too is from Hashem’, and let the a-hole push in?

Depending on the day, I have a different response.

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Like this morning in the post office.

My husband was queuing to see the teller, it’s a long queue, he’s waiting patiently – then some old bag shows up, tells the guy in front of my husband who is lost in his smartphone and happy to stay ‘lost’ a bit longer that she’ll be super-quick, so he lets her in front – and then of course, she wasn’t.

My husband decided to actually go over to her and ask her why she’d pushed in, lied, and then held up everyone else for an extra 10 minutes. She told him:

I’m an OAP.

Like being ‘old’ somehow gives you a ‘get out of jail free card’ for being a selfish, pushy old bag…

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In the car on the way to his Kollel, we were discussing it.

Was the better option to just ‘accept all this is from God’, smile, nod and contnue to wait patiently?

After we talked it through, I suddenly realised that the two things are separate. God decided how long my husband was going to wait in the bank queue, to the last millisecond. And, my husband had to accept God’s decree patiently, and without getting stressed.

At the same time – that old bag was clearly not acting appropriately, and if we all just keep turning a blind eye to psycho behaviour, instead of calling it out, politely and non-aggressively – I don’t think that’s what God wants either.

The world is not hefker.

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I dropped my husband off at the Old City, and then got stuck in a massive queue in the car park.

A big coach was dropping off a bunch of schoolgirls for a day trip.

I waited patiently for five minutes – and then, I realised that everyone had got out a long time ago, and the coach was still parked blocking the whole road.

There was a massive queue of cars forming behind me.

So, I got out of my car to see what was going on, and lo and behold, the arab driver was having a nice play around on his smartphone, while the road ahead of him was totally clear.

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You need to move, you are blocking the road for everyone!

I told him.

(Was I being a ‘selfish, pushy old bag’?)

I’m a coach, I’m not a private vehicle, he told me back.

So what?! I told him.

I can’t get past, he lied through his teeth.

I looked at his coach, looked at the massive amount of space in front of him, looked at him – we both understood he was totally lying.

Very grudgingly, he moved.

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Back in the car, I was thinking about it again:

Was that ‘controlling’, or was that taking responsibility?

For sure, the outcome was still in God’s hands. He could have made it that the guy didn’t move, and honestly, there is nothing I could have done to make him.

At the same time, he wasn’t behaving appropriately, and calling that out made a difference, apparently.

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I am still thinking all this through.

King Hezekiah’s modus operandi was to pray a bit, go back to sleep, and wait for God to smite Sennacherib miraculously, that destroyed the Assyrian army camped by the walls of Jerusalem, overnight.

He woke up, and the problem was solved.

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By contrast, King David’s modus operandi was to pray, pursue and destroy the enemy – and STILL to know that it was all just God, after all.

That last path is way, way harder.

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Bottom line: as Rabbi Tarfon taught:

We can’t complete the task – but that doesn’t mean we are free from engaging with it, either.

We have to ‘do our bit’, our own hishtadlut, whatever that actually means, but still to know the outcome is 100% from God.

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One last thought, connected to my package delivery issues.

Package 1: I left it totally hefker for three months, before I even chased it. It went back to sender, I missed the deadline to ask for a refund, and I felt like I hadn’t done what I could, I hadn’t ‘done my bit’, because I was lazy and had yeoush about the Israeli Postal system.

Package 2: I left it totally hefker for only a month before I chased it – and that was still too late. It went back to sender. But this time, at least I got a refund.

Package 3: I tracked it from the third day it was posted. I am still tracking it. Apparently, it’s been stuck at Ben Gurion for three weeks. The Israeli post office chat keeps telling me that. The post office didn’t respond to my email. And when I tried to call the customer service, I got a message telling me they would ‘call me back shortly’. That was three days ago.

I’m guessing – call me a prophet – that this package will ALSO end up not being delivered, but at least this time, I did my bit and I know where the problem actually lies.

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Package 4: I went into ‘super over-control’ mode, sent it to my mother in the UK, and then hit the exact same problem, despite being all over the delivery, writing emails to the sender, chasing awful, horrible DHL, that is pretending they delivered it when they absolutely did not.

Am I going to get Package 4, do you think?

At this point, the odds are not great It’s all in God’s hands, like everything, and having done everything I could possibly do, I can move with a happier heart onto the next stage of this, which is figuring out:

Why does God not want me ordering stuff from abroad, any more?

(I’ll let you know, if I figure that out.)

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But bottom line is: It’s all God.

But, that’s not an excuse for having yeoush, and not doing the maximum in our power to try to fix and rectify stuff that’s going wrong in our lives – especially, by working on our bad middot.

And ‘control freak’ tendencies…

And lack of emuna.

It’s a full-time job, ad 120.