A Story of Faith-2

A Story of Faith-2

Many people see faith or surrender as a way to have their dreams come true. They believe that they’ll pray to some god and their wishes will be granted. This is not how nature operates. It can’t afford to, for we often wish for the wrong things. We keep desiring certain outcomes without realizing or understanding the cost of those desires. We forget that our choices are intricately linked to our fate, they shape our destiny. In wanting the “good” stuff alone, we only see what we want to see.

Rather than aiming to be the person who could keep his or her partner happy, we wish for a person who will keep us happy, for example. And as we change, things that made us happy earlier no longer do so. We then wish for another person, a better partner or something like that. Rather than being content with what we have, we crave for more things. To acquire more things, we work harder, often at the cost of our health and relationships. The quality of living may go up but the quality of life stands compromised and then we wonder that how come more things are not making us happy.

Yes, you can grow a seedless melon but not a skinless one. Nature puts a protective covering on everything. Removing that layer can be sometimes tedious or messy, but without it the fruit will perish before it even ripens. Some part of our life will inevitably go in laboring to peel the coconut before we can enjoy the tender inside.

Faith is not a tug-of-war between your desires and His grace (both of which are endless) hoping that one day you’ll lure God into playing unfair. On the contrary, it is letting go. It is raising your hands in surrender without giving up on your action. Faith is knowing that not every day out there will be sunny. And that’s okay. It is realizing that dawn will follow dusk. Faith is awareness that a cloudy sky doesn’t mean the sun has set.

To work on everything that you can and to let go off everything beyond your control is faith in a nutshell. Such faith, made up of action and surrender, is the most potent antidote of all fears.

As Blaise Pascal said most beautifully, “The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know. We feel it in a thousand things.”

Faith is heart’s wisdom. It’s what your mind can’t grasp but your heart knows. Give it a place in your life and you’ll fly with a thousand wings. Higher and swifter. Across the seas, beyond the skies.

Om Namah Shivay