There is an interesting Midrash that says if you dream about Pinchas by night, great wonders will happen to you by day.
Pinchas was a zealot who took matters into his own hands – with the approval of Moses – and saved the Jewish people. In this week’s Torah portion, he is rewarded for his behavior. Seemingly, the reason for this is because the Hebrew word for wonders is peleh, which has the same first letter, P, as Pinchas.
However, this seems to be a silly reason. After all, Pinchas himself did not have miracles and wonders happen to him daily, even though he had a “P” as the first letter of his name every day of his life. So why, then, if I dream about Pinchas, will miracles and wonders happen to me when they didn’t happen to him?
What is the deeper lesson here?
True, Pinchas might have experienced a miraculous event only one time in his life, but it was an exceptional time in his life; it was not an exception from his life. That is who he was: He was an exceptional person, but he did not have many opportunities for exceptional things to happen to him.
Let me explain.
When we say in the Shema that we are committed to G-d with all of our heart, with our soul, and with our might, we mean that we are ready to die for G-d. We are ready to put our life on the line. Most of us never have the chance to be tested—thank G-d. But that isn’t to say that we don’t mean what we say. We can still be fully committed.
You can be very committed to your job, to your marriage, to being a parent, or to being a good friend, and never be tested as to the extent your commitment holds (and we should never be tested). That does not mean that you are not ready. Many soldiers train for years and never see the battlefield. That doesn’t mean that they are not “battle ready.”
It is the same with Pinchas. His attitude about life was that he was always ready to do what was right. He was ready to put his life on the line for the cause. True, this opportunity only came once in his lifetime, but that one time revealed to us his true essence.
This is the deeper lesson of the Midrash. We should know what our inner resources are. Even if we just dream of it, we should know that we can bring our dreams to fruition.