Machshavot HaLev - Yeshivat Lev HaTorah

41
בלה תובשחמ
in Hoshea (13:8) about this point. The navi compares Hashem’s anger toward the
rebellious people to the anger of “a bereaved bear.” Why use the analogy of a bear?
The Radak explains that a mother bear is particularly ferocious when protecting
her young. The reason for this is that when a cub is born he remains covered in
a thick layer of placenta. The mother bear must remove this material and the
only way it can do so is by licking it off, a task that is quite cumbersome. This is
precisely why the bear is the animal that is most protective over its children; it’s
because it toils intensely in order to bring its child into this world safely.
Struggling to accomplish something oneself also leads to better results. A child
only learns to walk when his parents are no longer holding him. When he needs
to struggle and work excessively to get from one side of the room to the other is
when he’s really learning how to walk. When the child succeeds because of his
own intense efforts, that success is much greater than if he had received assistance.
Not only is the feeling of success greater, but the actual ability of the child to walk
has improved. The child’s improvement is far greater than it would have been had
he not have had to exert such efforts as the result of being assisted.
Avraham Avinu, the bear, and children all show us how toiling in a task produces
far greater results than if something had been handed to us. Since Avraham went
through so much in his continued dedication to Hashem before and after he
received his brit milah, it was the most precious thing to him. The cub is the most
precious thing to the bear because it’s something she worked so hard to bring
to life. Walking for the baby is achieved at its highest level when he works his
hardest to succeed. The idea we can learn from Avraham Avinu is that when we
toil in a task it will make the outcome precious to us. The bear teaches us that by
toiling in our lives we can make things that are already close to us, like the cub,
even closer. Children can teach us that when we sweat through a hard process,
our actual ability greatly improves. If we can emulate these three ideas than we
can make our avodat Hashem precious to us like Avraham, bring God, who is
never too far from us, even closer like the bear does to her child, and strengthen
ourselves, like the baby does, to serve Hashem with all our ability.