My Encounters With God!

Dear Akila,
You may be right in banning these blogs from 'can read in office list'.
But if only we realize a fraction of his love we will be crying 24 by 7. We wont even have the mind to sleep.
And yes you said it right. If we have to love Him back it will be only with His blessings.
Even if we close our eyes to just tell him, 'My Lord at least make me understand this simple fact that 'Thy will be done not mine.'
Thanks for coming in and thanks for those soft expressions of love.
regards,
sridhar

 

In our last births we should have been born as a father and a daughter or a mother and a son. I see a lot of similarities, Malar.

I do look for signs in the form of words behind the auto, names on the lorry and so on.

For several years I used to take a detour to go through a temple (Thallakulam Vinayakar Koil and Perumal Koil) After a time the traffic on those places became hectic and I decided to take a different route. As my vehicle started running on that route I felt guilty. Am I going away from God, and that too for traffic?

No, no, God wont mind all those silly things, the other part of the mind replied.

Ok, then show me some clear signal, Lord. I almost shouted. Remember, the signal has to be abundantly clear, I warned Him.

Just then a Maruti Omni came from my behind cut me across and dashed past me. I wanted to shout at the driver.
And behind the vehicle was written in bold letters,

"My Presence shall go with thee."
Well, I stopped my vehicle by the road-side and was crying for a long time.

Later I learnt that was a method of communication chosen by God. Neal Donald Walsh writes in his Conversations With God, that God can talk through symbols, third-party conversations, signs or whatever.

When I wrote my CA final exams and was about to go to a temple on the last day of exam my father wanted me to come to a Swamiji. I was not very keen. My father insisted. But I put my foot firmly down and told him that when I have direct communication with God and when He speaks the language of love why should I need an agent?
My parents went to the Swamiji and I went to the temple.
My father came back with a small idol of my Lord.
"You wont come to the Swamiji. See even your Lord has come to us through the Swamiji."
I was just 23 at that time and damn possessive of God.
How can He go to some Swamiji.
I cried in my bed that night.
In fact I did not have any great respect for that particular Swamiji.
'How can you go to Him, my Lord? And see people are now making fun of me, and you. Do something about this or else..."

You won't believe Malar the very next day the God's image was missing from our Pooja room. My father was searching for that throughout the house; it was not there. A week later the Swamiji was exposed as a fraud.

The incident you have narrated about your visit to the temple is quite touching. I can never understand the women being prohibited during their periods of menstruation. In Kerala there is an Amman who's believed to menstruate Herself. And people worship her all through the year.

God is chauvinistic but men are.

thanks for the touching reply, Malar which added a sheen to this blog.
regards,
sridhar

 

Dear Ice,

thanks a lot I am happy that you could relate to the blog. That was because you had similar happenings in life and have tasted His love.

I am really moved by the incident. Once you pray with all your heart God goes out of the way to help you out.

thanks for stepping in,
sridhar

 

Dear Shail,

thanks for stepping in. In these two encounters I felt thrilled to feel His presence. These incidents happened long back when my love for God was far less than what it is today, not that it is much even now.

Thinking about these incidents, Shail, I now feel that I should have accepted hunger and absence of paayasam as His gifts and should not have raised those questions at all.

If I want proof in the form of instant food and paayasam in the factory, then my devotion is nothing but a kind of spiritual prostitution. I should grow. And I am now sure that I need to evolve through a million life-times.

All we got to do is call out to God from the depth of our souls and He/She will respond.

That's profound. But the real devotion is when we feel His presence and do not feel the need to call. Nor insist on response as a condition precedent to his existence.
thanks once again,
sridhar

 

Dear Radhi,
Thanks for stepping in. There are certain things that I want to say again and again. Hence I repeated the first incident.
Moreover I was sure that these incidents would trigger forth similar incidents in the lives of other ILites. And my expectations have been more than fulfilled.
thanks once again, Radhi,
sridhar

 

Thanks tuffyshri for coming in and for sharing that beautiful incident.
A similar thing happened in our office about four, five years ago when we were handling man-power consultancy services.
I had a lady assistant and one afternoon asked her to call a particular person who was on our temp rolls.
This man was going in a two-wheeler at that time. He stopped the vehicle and then took the call. But nevertheless was irritated that he was called on the way.
But minutes later he found that the car which went in front of him applied sudden brake and all the two-wheelers following the car hit it and fell down. Three persons sustained serious injuries. But for the call he would also have fallen into similar fate, he told us later.
Strange, but always loving, are the ways of God.
regards,
sridhar

 

Dear Raji,
thanks. The end is not abrupt. I left it open so that others' stories would fit in there. See how many people have written? And these stories are even better than mine.
regards,
sridhar

 

thanks for the images, sunitha

 

hi uma,
I have been crying hoarse all these years that though we have let God down, He has never and will never let us down. And I am really happy to trigger the recalling of so many touching incidents.

regards,
sridhar