A Small Jet of Water | Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair

One spark can start an inferno and one jet of water can put it out. During the terrible fires in Los Angeles, 65-year-old John Carr defied evacuation orders to save the home that had been passed down to him by his parents. The house was built by my mother and father in 1960. I lived here my whole life, so there's a lot of memories here. And I think I owed it to them, as well, to try my best to save it. He said, Some things in life are worth fighting for. When I was out here, hosing the house down and getting ready, and when the houses started to burn, I didn't see one single fire truck out here at all. Zero. If they had had some fire trucks just to put a squirt here, a squirt there, and kept an eye on things, all these houses would be here now. It started with one little spark, one little small fire. One small jet of water can put out an inferno, but only at the beginning. The Gemara in Sukkah Daf 52 says, אמר רבי יהודה: לעתיד לבוא in the future, in the World to Come, Hashem will take the Yetzer Hara and slaughter it in front of the Tzaddikim and the Resha’im. Both of the Tzaddikim, the righteous, and the Resha’im, the evil, will cry. The Tzaddikim will cry when they realize that the Yetzer Hara they overcame was like an enormous mountain. And the Resha’im will realize that the Yetzer Hara that they failed to overcome, was like a tiny thread of hair. And they will cry, How were we not able to conquer such a small thread of hair? The uncontrollable inferno of the Yetzer Hara starts off with a little spark. All you need is one or two jets of water to put it out. But only in the beginning. If you don't stamp out that fire at the start, it will grow and engulf you. If John Carr was prepared to fight for his legacy, his house, his memories, how much more we, the children of Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov, should be prepared to fight for ours. John Carr said there were no fire trucks in the area, he was on his own. You know, that's our world today. We're on our own. No one cares about Kedushah in the world, no one. We're the only ones. And we're preserving דורי דורות, generations, we're preserving a legacy infinitely more valuable than any house. We have to do for ourselves and the world what John Carr did for his house alone. We have to stand up and rescue a world burning, out of control with תאוות. It only takes a small jet of water.