He came to me recently. I was shocked to see a totally different man. He looked so distressed and untidy that I could hardly recognise him.
"Ours was a happy family. It was on my 22nd birthday that our misery set in. We discovered our mother was having an affair with another man. My sister broke down, my father reprimanded my mother. My mother simply walked out of the home with the other man. “My father turned to alcohol as a getaway from his hurt and humiliation. My sister left home to live with her boyfriend. Within the next two months her boyfriend threw my sister out of his house. After few days I found that she had been raped and pushed into prostitution. I took her to a psychiatrist and now she seemed to respond to treatment. This respite too turned out short-lived as the doctor was a pervert and began to abuse her sexually.
“Right now, I am fully exhausted. I do not have either the physical or the mental strength to take care of my sister and myself. Why is Christ testing me? What sin have I committed? Should life be so miserable?”
He began to sob like a child.
With a prayer and love in my heart I told him, "God gives us problems not to tumble us but to humble us. Treat all difficulties as divine surgery."
I hugged him and felt his sorrow. More than my words my action of hugging himhad a calming effect on him.
Please do not think that I am trying to rationalize all the misfortunes that befall us. Only when we are faced with problems do we wake up and try to find solutions that enable us to recover from that. That process releases new creativity energies. We see possibilities we never thought existed. At that moment, our mind functions at its optimum level of alertness. Let us realize that by giving us sorrow, God is only trying to improve our ability to think differently. We should learn to make our sorrows sacred. We should treat experience of any kind as a master guiding us and teaching us. Our book of life should be the best scripture.
