The world to come does not get enough press. You can go through your whole day and not think about it once. You and I can completely forget about it as if it was completely irrelevant.
The trouble is that it is not clear upon what it depends.
A play from the Middle Ages brings out the urgency of the issue.
God calls to Death and Death comes and declares:
''Lord, I will in the world go run over all, And cruelly out-search both great and small; Every man will I beset that liveth beastly, Against God's laws, and dreadeth not folly: He that loveth riches I will strike with my dart, His sight to blind, and from heaven to depart, Except that alms be his good friend, In hell for to dwell, world without end.''
Everyman says: "Though I be a sinner most abominable, Yet let my name be written in Moses' table"
And he adds: "For fair promises men to me make; But, when I have most need, they me forsake"
But nowadays it seems largely forgotten.
To some degree I imagine I was always aware that I will one day have to give an accounting. But when I first began to think more seriously about it was when I read the Musar book (אור ישראל) of a disciple of Reb Israel Salanter [Isaac Blazer].
So upon what does the next world depend? Good Deeds. Acts of kindness.
The trouble is that it is not clear upon what it depends.
A play from the Middle Ages brings out the urgency of the issue.
God calls to Death and Death comes and declares:
''Lord, I will in the world go run over all, And cruelly out-search both great and small; Every man will I beset that liveth beastly, Against God's laws, and dreadeth not folly: He that loveth riches I will strike with my dart, His sight to blind, and from heaven to depart, Except that alms be his good friend, In hell for to dwell, world without end.''
Everyman says: "Though I be a sinner most abominable, Yet let my name be written in Moses' table"
And he adds: "For fair promises men to me make; But, when I have most need, they me forsake"
But nowadays it seems largely forgotten.
To some degree I imagine I was always aware that I will one day have to give an accounting. But when I first began to think more seriously about it was when I read the Musar book (אור ישראל) of a disciple of Reb Israel Salanter [Isaac Blazer].
So upon what does the next world depend? Good Deeds. Acts of kindness.
