Near my home there is a bridge that allows a highway to cross over a quiet street. Next to the bridge, there is a cement marker that was used as a reference point to survey the highway. It’s old and rotting—part of the concrete had crumbled away, allowing the iron reinforcement bars inside to rust.
Several years after the highway was built, some one made a discovery: it seems that this marker wasn’t in the right place. Because of this, the highway wasn’t in the right place. People became upset, and a great meeting was held to discuss the consequences of the misplaced marker.
When the highway was built, many homes and businesses were displaced. Newspapers were filled with pictures of people recently displaced, and the text of the stories described their sense of hopelessness because of their enforced loss. These people came to the meeting and argued that the highway needed to be moved, and their homes and businesses should be restored.
People who lived on what was supposed to be the route argued that the highway should remain where it is. There was no sense, they said, in tearing down their homes so that the homes of those wrongly displaced could be rebuilt. They had seen the pictures and read the stories; they wanted to remain in their homes next to the highway.
From above, G-d looked down, and smiled.
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