In response to a letter, the Rebbe writes: Regarding your remarks about the suffering and losses in your life, I wish to draw an analogy that perhaps will shed some light on the issue at hand.

It is an experience indeed to enter an operating room in a hospital and witness a human being crying out in pain, lying on the operating table, surrounded by people with knives in their hands who are cutting him.[36] Not knowing the patient's medical history, the onlookers would be frantic, thinking that murderers are attacking a victim who is weeping from great pain.

However, when these same observers are informed of the prolongation of life the surgery is expected to bring, they will then focus their attention on how the process is healing the patient rather than viewing the surgeons as cold murderers.

The same is true regarding the turbulent moments in one's life, when undesirable and even unfortunate things happen. If one believes that the world is not a jungle in which things just randomly happen, but that things are run by a system that governs not only his life but his family's too, he will become confident that his experiences are part of the overall Divine system that controls every element of Creation. The only unfulfilled desire that he may still have is that he does not hear a message directly from the Instructor, namely G-d, as to the rhyme and reason for all that transpires in his life.

Igros Kodesh of the Rebbe, vol. 13, p. 171

   

Notes:

36. (Back to text) This refers to minor surgeries which were then performed without anesthesia.