A presence we frequently forget

God lives in all of us, but we are hardly aware of His presence as we navigate through the rollercoaster of life. His voice is muffled in the frenzied pace we undertake every day till we reach our resting place. All impulses of conscience are stilled in the pursuit of self-seeking goals and interests and of ‘arriving’ in a world of conventional markers of success. We glory in our excesses in total oblivion of the deprivations of the less endowed.

Burdened as we are with trials and responsibilities at every turn, we go to Him in our hour of need with our woes, and we wonder at the unreasonable silence of the merciful God. Little do we realise that our sorrows are of our own making: the misuse of our free will granted to us by the Almighty, our lack of introspection, our lack of empathy, and love for our fellow beings. We treat those on the edges of our existence like the house help, the courier boy and the liftman with scant regard, we have no time or space for the grief of others, we do not ever reflect ”But for the grace of God go I”.

We mistake goodness for weakness, humility for pretense, trade the innocence of children for the guiles and wiles of the world. We treat the aged and the sick , the disabled and the lonely as impediments or at best necessary evils in the smooth functioning of our lives. When we look around and watch the universe in operation with its immutable laws and the ‘terriffic’ beauty of its majestic mountains, its deep seas, its wild forests, its stretches of grasslands, its flora, and fauna, we are barely conscious of the creator.

We desecrate the planet with impunity, forgetting that the planet is not a personal possession but only an inheritance held in trust that needs to be passed on to waiting generations. We are so wanting in compassion and yet we make arduous pilgrimages to witness God in all his shrines in various temples, churches, and mosques and offer soulful prayers for our own wellbeing.

We tend to forget that man is the highest manifestation of God, and in honouring him we honour ourselves, and we honour the God who lives in us and around us.