Let Us Be Grateful
If God’s love for man is another way of describing His grace, what prevents us from responding to His love? The greatest impediment to responding to His love and making use of His grace, it appears to me, is our ingratitude. How soon do we forget the helping hand of God! He hears our prayer, responds with grace, and saves us from a very difficult situation. We thank Him. That’s the end of our using His grace! We do not remember His kindness, His love, His concern for us and want Him to prove it again and again. But when God wants us to prove our loyalty to Him and faith, we grumble and complain!
God does not mind that. But we are the losers. Even though He allows us to share His power when we need it most, because of our lack of proper communication with Him, of faith and love, we fall to grasp the moment and make best use of it. Even if we use a particular moment of revelation, we fail to sustain it. Thus, while we grumble, grunt, whimper, curse, He only turns His sad face away, regretting: “Dear one, when will you learn gratitude?” Thus, the magnificence of life turns into a living misery because we are too blind to see, too weak to hold on, and too ungrateful to love—and all this is not because God has denied us anything; we have denied ourselves that which has come to our doorstep.
It may seem that I write as if I know everything about grace! God forgive my impertinence if I think so! I do not know how God’s grace works in my life. But should I not know when He works? I may not know how His grace functions in our lives; but I must be able to recognize it when it functions and when I see God’s hand shaping my life, my thoughts and deeds, re‑arranging and re‑ordering things around me favorably, saving me from critical situations and awarding me more than my efforts. I should then be filled with humility and reverence, not complacence and self‑esteem. I should not feel that God gives me special attention because I deserve it and I am better than all the others to whom apparently He denies these favors! That is the most dangerous thought. It cuts the life‑line between me and God. I thoroughly miss the meaning of that God‑touch, and by fostering ego, build a wall that blocks out further grace!
Recognizing grace
That means, I am pleading here for a very important thing, recognizing and then preserving grace. Grace need not necessarily be a downpour. It may consist in the simplest incidents of our life. A letter received in time; a bus in time to the place of my work; a little headache that holds me from attending a party; a passage in a book, and so on and on are God’s self‑announcements. Silently does He come to us to give us a silent, unmixed, and very personal joy because He personally cares for us.
A very valid question may be asked at this moment. How do I know my getting a certain letter and meeting a certain friend on a certain day is grace, not chance? Likewise, all the daily incidents that fill my interminable days and nights might be pure chances, mere coincidences. Why should God be credited with showing His special care for me, while all this may be just natural? I cannot refute you; just as you cannot prove yourself. But let us not leave it there for the individuals to take it as they like. Could we judge this, look at this from a different angle, and see whether that is acceptable to us?
Granting that these incidents are revelations of God’s grace, what happens to me? I am profoundly grateful to God; I realize He is always with me and takes care of me in all ways. My worries are reduced; my understanding becomes deeper; I am cooler and more collected in my activities—in which state my intelligence, discrimination, efficiency are more effective and manifest. Above all my days become an endless song and nights an endless dream. On the other hand, if I explain them away as chances, coincidences, or accidents, I see no nobility and meaning in the business of living. I vegetate like a tree and life becomes a confused lyre. I learn no humility, no reverence, am full of doubts and divisions, whimper, shout, avenge, and die. I establish no contact with God, the fountain source of all beneficence; become a bitter man with the iron in my soul. My days are filled with dark shadows, and nights with nightmares. Which is better?
Proof of grace
The first section of people makes the natural supernatural; the second section treat the supernatural as natural. If a blooming rose early in the morning doesn’t give us a touch of the supernatural, of the miracle, of the grace of God, I wonder whether we can see any other revelation of God’s grace in the right spirit. If the smile of a baby, the love of a friend, the concern of a mother, the devotion of a brother, and the faith of your boss are only ‘natural’ and nothing else, I do not know how God can convince me of His love. The most natural is the most wonderfully supernatural, for God’s will is reflected in it.
With this awareness, a simple act like eating your lunch can become exciting and an occasion to remember God, thank God, and love God. That is supernatural. Grace need not transcend the natural laws always. It can operate and most often does operate within the natural laws. That does not take out of it its essential qualities. Moreover, how much of the so‑called ‘natural’ do we claim to understand? Are we able to have a very rational and related explanation of all that happens to us? Then why fret about `natural’, `chance’, and `coincidence’? If we perceive how they come to us and make life a challenge, we may see the supernatural in the natural; we can see God’s glorious hand even in a flower and a letter. Then we shall sing with Shelley “Our sincerest laughter with some pain is fraught”; and “I fill upon the thorns of life, I bleed”! We will probably join the Upanishadic Rishi and sing, “I will live for a hundred autumns, I will hear (noble songs) for a hundred autumns”, etc.
Man is a spark of the immortal light in a speck of dust. There is always close correspondence between the mortal and the immortal. When the mortal perceives it, it is dyed immediately with the color of the immortal. If it does not perceive that, the immortality as well never exists. Divine grace and human effort are only two sides of the same coin, the front and the rear wheels of a car. They are not independent of, separate from, each other.
~Bejoy K. Misra, Prasanthi Nilayam
Source: Sanathana Sarathi, Feb 1985
