How Much Is It Worth To You?

A teacher asked his students: Would you accept a million dollars in exchange for not wearing tefillin for a day?

Most people's gut reaction is - no way!

(You can substitute a mitzva that elicits that reaction for you and you can make it ten million dollars).

The teacher then went on to say, if you wouldn't sell the mitzva for a million dollars, why don't you treat the mitzva as something worth a million dollars?

It's food for thought.  If you think about it long enough you might start wondering - well, maybe it is worth giving up the mitzva of tefillin for a day in exchange for millions of dollars.  Think about how many mitzvos one can do with that money! There are halachos about precedence in mitzvos.  But somehow it seems that's the Yetzer Hara talking.  I don't know.  If the opportunity arises, maybe it's a question for a rav (or maybe the very question shows we don't value the mitzva we are willing to sell). 

Until then, we can think about how valuable mitzvos are to us.