A vort of the Rebbe on this week's parsha, Parshas Chayei Sarah. The parsha starts off with the words, ויהיו חיי שרה מאה שנה ועשרים שנה ושבע שנים שני חיי שרה. The life of Sarah was 100 years, 20 years, and 7 years, which means she lived for 127 years. And then the pasuk adds, שני חיי שרה, these are the years of the life of Sarah. And Rashi says, what does the pasuk want to tell us by adding these words, כולם שוים לטובה, that they are all equal to the good? That means all the years of Sarah were all equally good. Cuz sometimes by a person you have some are good, some are not so good, but by Sarah, all the years were equally good. And the Rebbe asks, we know that everything that we learn is a lesson in our avodah, especially things that we learn about the avot and the imahot, because מעשה אבות סימן לבנים. Whatever happened to the avot is a sign to the children, not only a sign, it's a נתינת כח and a lesson to the children. So we have to take a lesson from the fact that by שרה כולם שוים לטובה, all her years were the same, same for the good, they were all good. But the truth is by a regular person it can't be. I mean mostly a person is not always good, there are ups and downs, and people have better times and worse times. So what lesson can we take from Sarah that כולם שוים לטובה, that we should also have them all good?

And the Rebbe explains it, that there is a possibility for a Yid to make all his years good, even those years, chas veshalom, that were not so good. And that is what the Gemara says, that if a person does teshuvah, זדונות נעשו לו כזכיות. If a person does teshuvah, a proper teshuvah, teshuvah me'ahavah, a teshuvah out of love for Hashem, that changes the past. The aveirot that he did become mitzvot, they become good. And as Rashi says, it changes the past, not here, Rashi in Gemara says that it means that the aveirah that was there before isn't there anymore. Not only it's not there anymore, it becomes good. The aveirah turns into a mitzvah. How does an aveirah turn into a mitzvah?

So the Alter Rebbe explains in Tanya, that we know that when a baal teshuvah does teshuvah, from then on he serves Hashem even stronger than he did than a regular person who never did aveirot. And he gives the mashal, just like when a person is thirsty, doesn't have water, and finally he gets water, he drinks the water with such great pleasure, with much more pleasure, it's much stronger to him, much better for him than if he would have had the water the whole time. The same thing, a person who serves Hashem always, so he serves Hashem, that's very good. But a person who did not serve Hashem, he did aveirot, and then he realized, so he's so thirsty that when he serves Hashem, he serves him much stronger. So it comes out that what he did before, the aveirot, became a means to make him serve Hashem better. It became a means to the end of serving Hashem better. So mimela, that is part of the עבודת השם that he does later, because if not for the aveirot, he wouldn't serve Hashem that way. So since this brought him to serve Hashem better, this is not an aveirah anymore, this is now a mitzvah. So a Yid is able to change the past.

So therefore the lesson is that by every Yid, even a person who's ups and downs, is able to make that כולם שוים לטובה, that all the years will be equally good, because a Yid is able to do teshuvah. And if you do teshuvah, especially teshuvah me'ahavah, you change the past and they're all good. This is the lesson the Rebbe says that we have to take from the fact that Sarah Imeinu, who's our mother, and a mother passes down from her characteristics and her qualities to the children, that we have that same ability to make כולם שוים לטובה, all the years good, that when we look back and we see something that was no good, and because of that we change and we do teshuvah, and we serve Hashem better, then it means that whatever was no good before turns into good, so כולם שוים לטובה, and that's shayach to every single person.