God grants us not what we want but what we need!
Again, and again, brothers and sisters meet me, saying: “We have prayed to the Lord for a particular thing to happen: we have prayed for it, day in and day out. But the Lord will not grant us what we want, though He gives it to many others who never pray to Him nor even believe in Him!”
And I say to them in the words of the darvesh of the dark night: “My brother! My sister! God gives us not what we want but what we need!”
To the vast majority of men and women, God is a sort of a storekeeper who can only justify His existence by supplying them all those things for which they send in a requisition, health, long life, jobs and prosperity. So long as God gives them what they want, God is good, God is loving and there is none like unto Him. But the moment He refuses to oblige, He becomes a cruel God unjust and unkind. His very existence is denied.
In plain words, we do not want God’s Will to be done. We want our wills to be done by Lord, and by everyone else!
And so, we keep on chasing shadows. Like butterflies we flit from one sensation to another, in a vain search of that true happiness which is not obtained until we return to God. O traveller who art weary with thy wanderings! return to thy Homeland! Away from thy Home there is no rest. And thy Home is God.
He who stands still in the Lord, firm and resolute, finds everything in the Lord. The things he pursued and which eluded him, now come running to him but he desires them no longer. He needs nothing. He has attained to the stage where his hunger has been appeased and his thirst has been quenched.
So, love God with all your heart and soul. Talk to Him. Think of him. Rest in Him. In the midst of your daily work, turn to Him, again and again. These glad turnings of a loving and grateful heart are your best prayers to God.
Dada J P Vaswani is a humanitarian, philosopher, educator, acclaimed writer, powerful orator, messiah of ahimsa, and non-sectarian spiritual leader
