CARPE DIEM

     There is a legend about one of our sages who was about to travel from Eretz Yisrael to Rome. The night before he left, he had a dream in which he saw a beggar dressed in rags sitting at the gates of Rome and a voice in that dream said to him "Do you see that man? That is the Moshiach, dressed as a beggar."
The Rabbi woke up and could not get the dream out of his mind. He kept thinking about it. Finally, as he approached Rome at the end of his journey, there was a figure dressed in rags sitting exactly where he had been in his dream. The Rabbi approached him and said "Is it true that you are the Moshiach?"  And the man nodded. The Rabbi asked, “What are you doing here at the gates of Rome?" And the man answered, "Waiting". The Rabbi asked "Waiting in a world so full of misery and hatred and war, in a world in which the children of Israel  are scattered and oppressed? Moshiach, in the name of Hashem, what are you waiting for ?" And the Moshiach answered, "I've been waiting for you so I could ask you, in the name of G-D what were you waiting for?".
    I believe that one of the greatest sins of man is the act of procrastination .We all too often wait to act and when we finally do, to our dismay it is to late and sorrowfully the opportunity passes us by.
     Our motto in life needs to be ‘Carpe Diem’, ‘Seize the Moment’.

Remember ‘Today is a ‘gift ‘and that is why we call it the ‘present ’. This gift is the blessings of life that Hashem has graciously bestowed upon humanity on a daily basis. This gift of life is not to be taken for granted but always to be cherished.  We must stop waiting and start acting in whatever endeavor we are searching for, especially in our quest for spiritual enlightenment.
    Our Parsha, this week, speaks extensively regarding the building of the Mishkan/Mikdash and how everyone graciously donated to the building of these holy places. However, I sense that more than the physical building of the Mishkan/Mikdash, we need to make our own lives a Mikdash, as the Torah states, ועשו לי מקדש ושכנתי בתוכם,  wherein Hashem can dwell amongst us in every possible way. This indeed takes time and effort and can not be accomplished by our acts of procrastination but needs our immediate attention and actions.
     Whatever our agenda in life may be, we cannot let ourselves become tainted by a deprecating and barren skepticism and discouraged by the sadness of certain hours which may unfurl before us.

     Let us stand erect and walk into the future with strength and fortitude and use all the time that Hashem has granted us to bring life's Blessings into existence.
Remember well the Moshiach is waiting for us and the question is " Will we hear his call and will we respond?”