Chukas

As the Jewish people continued their journey through the desert, they came to Sihon, the king of the Amorites, & asked him if they could peacefully pass through his land. He refused & came out to the desert to do battle with them. The Jewish people conquered him & settled in all the Amorite cities, in Heshbon and all its suburbs. The Torah then tells us the origins of this city of Heshbon, כי חשבון עיר סיחן מלך האמרי הוא, for Heshbon - it is the city of Sihon, king of the Amorite והוא נלחם במלך מואב הראשון ויקח את כל ארצו, and he had warred against the first king of Moab and took his land.   על כן יאמרו ‏המשלים , about this the poets would say באו חשבון, come to Heshbon.  

The gemara expounds this posuk as follows:  ‎על כן יאמרו המשלים, those that rule over their inclinations ‎say, בואו חשבון , let's make an accounting, how much we stand to gain from doing mitzvos & how much we stand to lose by doing avairos. The Chafetz Chaim says that the focal point of the yetzer hara is to make sure that we never sit down to make an accounting of where we are headed in life. Are we doing the right thing or the wrong thing. He ensures that we are too busy to ever stop & think about where we are headed. 

‎‏‎Rav Zacks (Chicago) wrote on באו חשבון , that we could never understand Hashems's chesbon, His reasons for doing what He does. The posuk prior to this informs us that originally the city of Heshbon was the city of Moav; however, since the Jews were commanded not to fight with Moav, they never could have gotten this land so Hashem had Sichon conquer Moav.   Now that the land belonged to Sichon, the Jews could conquer it. ‎Just think, when Sichon captured the land of Moav he thought he was expanding his kingdom. Little did he know that he was just doing it so that the Jewish people would be able to get it from him proving to us once again, that we have no idea why Hashem does what He does nor do we know what's the real cause of our actions. 

The sefer ברכי נפשי tells a story of a rabbi who had a cousin who was not religious.  No matter how much he tried to influence him, he refused to listen to anything & stayed as far away from religion as he could. The man's father passed away.  He sat shiva, said kaddish, but continued his life as before. A few years later, the man's mother passed away. The rabbi continued the story and said that a few months after that, he met his cousin again & now he was wearing a yarmulke.  He told him that he davens every day, keeps Shabbos, keeps kashrus & is on his way to keeping everything. Astonished, the rabbi asked his cousin what brought about the change? He said that when he was sitting shiva for his mother, one of his religious relatives came to visit.  As he was sitting there, he asked if I wanted to do something small & easy for my mother's soul.  Who wouldn't do small and easy for their mother?  So I said sure I'll do something easy. So he told me that on Friday afternoon before Shabbos, I should turn off the light in the fridge so that every time I open the fridge on Shabbos, I’m not turning on the light. That little part of Shabbos will be a merit for your mother's soul. That didn't seem too hard so I agreed. I did it every Friday toward evening. I turned off the light in the fridge. 

After a few weeks, I started thinking, if I'm not turning on the fridge light why am I turning on all the other lights in the house? I tried to ignore the question, but it kept bothering me ‏until I stopped turning on the lights in the whole house. After a few weeks, I started thinking, if I'm not using lights on Shabbos, why am I driving?  So I stopped driving & slowly I stopped all desecration of Shabbos. Then, one Friday night I thought to myself, I'm not using electric and I'm not driving, so what am I doing with my time? So I went to the shul where the rabbi greeted me warmly & invited me over to eat with him & his family. One thing led to another and I'm on my way to become fully religious. 

This is what it means when it says באו חשבון , take an accounting. Think about what we're doing. Sometimes we just have to look at what we're doing & ask ourselves the question. Are we doing enough? Is there a small thing we could change for the better? Can we help someone else? As we see, sometimes it's just a small suggestion that can make all the difference!