Beneath the Wings… Beneath the Schach

As always, my holiday treat is to curl up with a book after the meal, and that is exactly what I did. It was an “adventure novel”, but one in which the characters each face their own set of problems, some worse, and some not-so-bad, although no easy thing either. The thing is, that the characters in the novel all open their eyes to their flaws and faulty thinking, the single people get married, and all is well in G-d’s world.
At one point a wife is puzzling over why she has so many tests .And of course it all works out in the end.
Oh, I wish it was like that in real life! (Now I am not talking about Ricki’s Down syndrome. I have long ago accepted that as a part of our lives.) I have enough challenges in my life that if I cared to share them, it could strike someone as a rather fantastic novel. (But these things involve others, so I have no right to “go public” with it.) Unlike the movies, and unlike novels, real life does not wrap up nicely after a short while. People struggle with various burdens that may or may not go away.
So G-d gives us a reminder: The Succoth-booth, topped with its flimsy schach (a covering of leaves, reeds). We are beneath the schach, under G-d’s watchfull eyes. He has His reasons for our tribulations; reasons we may not understand…….but He is with us. We are beneath the wings of His presence.