Seeking God in man

Life’s journey is a challenging and hazardous one. Personal to societal problems can leave us feeling overwhelmed all the time. Financial worries, ill health, sudden calamities and natural disasters often rock our world. Insurmountable complications plague our relationships. Difficult bosses to please, moody colleagues to appease, incompatible family members to handle and rebellious teenage children to tackle.

Even if these are kept under permissible limits, there is always the annoying neighbour, the horrifying traffic, power cuts, water shortage, leaking roofs and corrupt bureaucrats to deal with.

 In the midst of all these, is it possible to really seek God? Can we see Him, feel Him and take comfort in Him? Is the mystic experience of God confined only to the hermits, religious and pastors? Is feeling the divine touch the safely guarded secret of merely the enlightened race? Though it does seem like God is real only to a select few, there is more to it than meets the eye.

God can be as real to a layman fighting for survival and happiness, as He is to the holy men who live in perfect unison with the Almighty. But to experience Him, the process of genuinely seeking Him must begin. The simplest way to seek Him is to see Him in others. Carlos Rodriguez says it best in his poem titled ‘I Sought My Soul’: “I sought my soul, but my soul I could not see. I sought my God, but my God eluded me. I sought my brother, and I found all three.”

God dwells in those suffering and in desperate need of compassion. Reaching out to them reveals the face of God.  Mother Teresa saw God in the squalor of the Moti Jheel slum children from the window of the classroom at Loreto Convent, where she was a teacher. Her spirit never rested until she sought those abandoned and desperate in the streets of Kolkata.

 Through them she saw God and had the joy of serving God. When Father Le Joly asked what motivated her in her works, she said most earnestly, “I do it for Jesus.”Another great humanitarian, General William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, the largest distributors of humanitarian aid, saw God in the poor and the destitute whom he served all his life. 

When an aged General Booth was lying in the hospital, with failing eyes and his son broke the news to him that he was soon to lose his sight, he said calmly, “Son, when I had eyesight, I found God and served Him with all my strength. Now that I will have no eyesight, I will continue to seek Him and serve Him just the same.”