In Parshas Behar(25:4,5) we learn of the Mitzvah ofShemitah: “But in the seventh year the land shall have a Sabbath of complete rest, a Sabbath of Hashem: you shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard. You shall not reap the aftergrowth of your harvest or gather the grapes of your untrimmed vines; it shall be a year of complete rest for the land.”
The Sefer HaChinuch (Mitzvah 84) explains one of the benefits of this Mitzvah: “And there is another benefit – the outcome of this is that a person will add to his trust in G-d, may He be blessed, since anyone who finds it in his heart to give and abandon to the world all of the produce of his lands and his ancestral inheritance for an entire year – and he is experienced in this himself and his family through this for all of his days – will never have the trait of stinginess overcome him too much, nor will he have a deficient amount of Bitachon.”
These words of the Chinuch are perplexing for with each Shemitah that a farmer kept he would witness an astounding miracle as the Pesukim (25:20-22) state: “And should you ask, ‘What are we to eat in the seventh year, if we may neither sow nor gather in our crops?’ I will ordain My blessing for you in the sixth year, so that it shall yield a crop sufficient for three years. When you sow in the eighth year, you will still be eating old grain of that crop; you will be eating the old until the ninth year, until its crops come in.”
Wouldn’t witnessing this awesome miracle every Shemitah be a significantly greater boost to his Bitachon in Hashem than the actof finding it in his heart to give and abandon to the world all of the produce of his lands and his ancestral inheritance for an entire year?
We see from here the importance of Chinuch HaMussar- performing actions based upon our beliefs – to attaining true Bitachon. All frum Jews know Hashem alone runs the world but many still lack Bitachon. This is because, as the Rishonim teach us, not everything we logically believe in our mind do we internalize in our heart. An overwhelming factor in how a human being internalizes knowledge are his actions. We may know something to be true, however, the more we act upon that knowledge, the more we internalize it. This being so, the actual performance of actions based upon our Bitachon, such as fulfilling the Mitzvah of Shemitah, can lead us to true Bitachon even more than witnessing the unbelievable miracles that are brought out through this Bitachon.