The Time You Give Comes Back With Blessing

The Midrash Rabbah on Megillat Ruth, quoting Rabbi Yehoshua, teaches: יֹתֵר מִמָּה שֶׁבַּעַל הַבַּיִת עוֹשֶׂה עִם הֶעָנִי, הֶעָנִי עוֹשֶׂה עִם בַּעַל הַבָּיִת — More than the homeowner does for the poor person, the poor person does for the homeowner. One application of this Midrash is in how we view the time we invest in helping others. People often think — especially when life is busy and responsibilities pile up — I'd love to do more chesed… I'd love to learn more Torah… I'd love to do more mitzvot… but I just don't have the time. It sounds logical: every minute we spend doing Hashem's work is a minute we could have spent on ourselves. But Hashem's accounting works very differently. When we give our time for His mitzvot, we don't lose time — we gain it. And it's not simply returned; it comes back with blessing. The more we give, the more we are given. Often, this isn't obvious, but sometimes we see it clearly in our own lives. A man who had recently moved into a new apartment discovered that one of his neighbors was an elderly, broken Jew who lived alone with no family or support. He decided to offer a small kindness: a hot meal. That small act quickly turned into a daily delivery. His family joined in, and it became part of their routine. But over time, the chesed became harder. The neighbor began requesting more specific meals — vegetables chopped finely, fruit salad prepared fresh. At first, the man complied, but eventually, the demands wore on him. He decided to stop chopping and simply sent whole vegetables and fruit, reasoning, He knows how to cut them himself. Around that same time, his healthy baby — who had always eaten well — suddenly refused to drink formula. The baby cried through feedings, turned his head away, spit out whatever he managed to drink, and each feeding became a stressful, time-consuming ordeal. The man didn't connect the two events — until a friend who also knew the elderly neighbor praised him for his kindness. "You have no idea what kind of mitzvah you're doing," the friend said. Then he added, "If you could please send the food nicely, prepared fresh the way he likes it, it's a very big part of the mitzvah." Those words struck a chord. The very next day, the man went back to preparing the food exactly as the neighbor preferred. That same day, his baby ate without crying, spitting, or resisting. The connection was crystal clear. When he tried to save time by doing less chesed, he ended up losing time in another area. We never lose by giving — we only gain. The time we "lose" on a mitzvah is never truly lost; it's invested. Hashem repays us with smoother days, calmer outcomes, and, yes, even babies who cooperate. But when we guard all our time for ourselves, we often find that it slips away anyway — tasks take longer, frustrations mount, and things don't flow. So the next time the yetzer hara whispers, You don't have time for this mitzvah, for Torah learning, or for chesed, whisper back: I don't have time not to.