The posuk in Michah (7:8) says, “My enemies should not rejoice over my fall, because I have risen up. Though I sit in darkness, Hashem is a light for me.” The Midrash (Yalkut Tehillim 247) relates that this posuk contains a secret message: “If I had not fallen, I would not have risen to where I am now. If I did not sit in darkness, Hashem would not have been a light for me.”
Rav Chaim Shmulevitz, zt”l, (Sichos Mussar, 5032 Ma’amar 37) applies this Midrash to our battles against the yetzer hara. After we fall, we can rise to incredible heights that we could never have reached had we not sinned. When we realize how low we have fallen and cry out to Hashem over straying so far from Him, this spurs us on to dramatically change our direction. Quickly, we fly way past where we were before we sinned, and we soar to the greatest heights. We gain strength that we never had before, and we start serving Hashem with emotion and meaning.
Our failures present an opportunity for greatness. They are not obstacles that hold us back, and we must not allow them to. Not only don’t they make us incapable of greatness, they can even become the sparks that bring the most growth. They can spur us on to reach amazing heights that we would never have aspired to had we not fallen so badly. Not only that, the added difficulty of having tasted sin gives us the opportunity to achieve incredible acts of success. This is another way our situation enables us to reach astounding heights! We should not be depressed by where we are. Rather, we should be excited because the lower we have fallen, the higher we can reach!
Finally, we must remember that at the right time, we can do teshuva to eliminate any sins we have committed, no matter how bad they are. Teshuva really works! It becomes as if we never sinned. We can wipe away all our sins and never have to deal with them again.
The yetzer hara tries to stop us from striving for greatness by bringing up our sins. We must not fall for this trick, because our sins don’t hold us back at all. By responding properly, we will continue to strive to reach greatness, and we will be motivated to fight in the battle of the generation.
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