Faith Reinstated

     

“As we grow older, it becomes difficult to just believe. It's not that we don't want to, but too much has happened that we just can't.”- Anonymous

I start my days quite late these days. The morning mist that enshrouds my home makes it quite difficult for me to pull myself away from the warm embrace of my blanket. It's not like I am asleep the whole morning, I wake up mid morning but lie in bed till almost noon. And since I never take breakfast, hunger is not a problem. I laze around in my cosy bed with my laptop and start my daily round of Facebook-ing :) I browse through the recent uploaded albums of the dozens of known faces who are either getting married or are attending weddings of people they know. The past year has been quite crazy I must say, it seems like almost everyone I know have got married or at least engaged, so there's never a dearth of pictures to check out in Facebook.

So, while browsing through the different profiles today, I came across an application called 'On this day, God wants you to know'. Well, it's not like I believe that God will speak to me through a Facebook application, but I went ahead and decided to give this application a try anyway. And the result was like this:

On this day, God wants you to know

... that prayer is real only when done with your whole heart. Reserve the sound of your voice for other people. God hears only what's in your heart.

I thought for a while about how I had recently become detached from prayers. I was never one to sit down on the prayer mat with the call of the Adhaan, but one thing I always did as a child was engage my heart in quality conversation with the Divine Being who I believed was listening; it was like a mental blog. It's not like I always had something to ask for, but the feeling of being in touch with Him made me feel lighter. It felt good to get things off my chest, like I was transferring some of the burdens that I had to carry within me to someone else who was willing to take it on. Whether my prayers were answered or not didn't matter,this was something I did ritualistically every day. 

So the message from this application reminded me of how that ritual slowly dissolved into extinction with age. Because as we get older, reality gets in the way of faith, and faith doesn't seem too real any more. But, after a long time today, I allowed myself to be free from all inhibitions and questions and delved into a one-on-one again. As the familiar feeling of relief and serenity flooded my being, I knew that I could do better than wasting precious hours of my life worrying about things I could never control. I remembered I had someone else to leave my worries to, that I was not alone and never would be. And I knew this ritual had to make a comeback if I wanted to keep my sanity intact in the future.

"When you have come to the edge of all light that you know, And are about to drop off into the darkness of the unknown, Faith is knowing one of two things will happen: There will be something solid to stand on or You will be taught to fly”- Anonymous