The pasuk says in Shir HaShirim about Hashem that He is משגיח מן החלונות מציץ מן החרכים – He watches over us through the windows and peers through the cracks. The sefer Shirat Shlomo explained this pasuk with a mashal of a father who heard that his son became sick with an illness that put him into a coma. The father quickly traveled to the hospital and never left his bedside until he became healed. When his son finally opened his eyes, he was so surprised to see his father there. He asked him how he got there so quickly. His father replied, “I didn’t just get here. I have been by your side the entire time that you were here.” The same is true of us and Hashem. During this long, almost two thousand-year exile, we have lost our ability to see Hashem, kavayachol . And when it suddenly comes to an end and Hashem reveals Himself, we are going to be in amazement at seeing the presence of the Shechina. We are also going to ask Hashem how He came so suddenly, and Hashem is going to say that He was always with us. He never left our side for a moment. Even though now we aren’t able to see Hashem openly, we are definitely able to feel His presence and pick up on the signals that He sends us all the time. A person may say that he hears about how Hashem is involved in so many other people’s lives, but he never gets to see it in his own life. We must know, Hashem is involved in everyone’s lives without exception. He speaks to all of us all the time, but it is up to us to see it. And that depends on the way we train our minds to think. A young lady sent me the following story about herself, which will help us understand this point better. She said she had been taking the city bus to work for the last year. The beginning of the ride is pleasant but then, when the bus stops at a certain transit center, a lot of homeless people get on and the bus fills up with a terrible odor of alcohol and drugs. Each day, she would feel so down at that moment. She would sometimes think, Yosef Hatzaddik’s wagon was filled with sweet spices on his way down to Mitzrayim , and that is how he knew that Hashem was with him. Why is my commute to work accompanied by the most unpleasant odors? Then, one day at the transit center, she was struck with a completely different feeling. The bus was filling up and it reached its capacity and the smell became very strong. But suddenly it hit her; all those people were taking things that harm themselves just to feel happier. Thank You Hashem that despite the fact that I am in shidduchim and it is rough and my friends are all married and I am bored and lonely, I have enough meaning and purpose and reason in my life to be grateful, that I don’t have to resort to doing those things. הודו לה' כי טוב . From that moment on, her entire perspective changed. Every day she would anticipate the time when the bus would reach that transit center so she could, once again, be reminded of how much beracha she has in her life and how good Hashem is to her. Recently, baruch Hashem, she got engaged and will be moving to a new neighborhood and will no longer need public transportation regularly. She is so excited about how she was able to change her attitude and really feel Hashem with her. She will now miss that moment of daily connection on the bus, but she knows she will find it in other ways. This young lady is teaching us a great lesson. She thought that Hashem abandoned her, as she suffered from the foul odors every day on the bus. But little did she know, that was precisely where she was going to find Hashem and connect to Him in ways that she could have never dreamed of. Hashem is with us all the time but we have to use our minds the right way to feel His presence.