The Midrash teaches that le’asid lavo, in the future End of Days, all korbanos, sacrifices, will be bateil, nullified; all prayers will also be nullified, with the exception of the Korban Todah, Thanksgiving offering. The sound of todah, gratitude, will continue to resonate – even when all others have been halted. We wonder what purpose gratitude will serve in the End of Days: What need will there be for requiring gratitude? There will no longer be any pain or sorrow, hunger or thirst, illness or personal trauma. There will be no questions, no accidents, no issues that need resolving. Everything will be good. People will be good. Indeed, the opposite of what Chazal are saying should be true: The very first korban to be nullified with the advent of the End of Days should be the Korban Todah. After all, we will have no reason for it.
Horav Chaim Zaitchik, zl, explains that, while veritably we will have no reason for offering a Todah for present miracles, we will have more reason to offer a korban for the past experiences which we now realize had actually been beneficial. We will now see with an unimpeded clarity of vision how those circumstances, which we once had thought were hurtful, painful, shameful were, in fact, the best things that have happened to us. In many instances, they changed our lives for the better. We will also discover that we had been wrong concerning situations that presented themselves as good. Perhaps, to the casual observer, they had appeared favorable, but, at the time, we had been privy to only part of the picture. Had we known more then, we would not have been that overjoyed.
We have all experienced episodes in our lives which we judged superficially according to the course of prior events, with our limited subjective vision. One day, we will see that we interpreted these events inaccurately. Would it not be best if we would just place our trust in the Almighty, Who has been here from the beginning and will be here until the very end? Clearly, His perspective is far better than ours.
