You do not need a cellphone or a bluetooth device to contact God! You need to be attuned, ‘in sync’ as they say, with the still, small voice that is heard deep within your heart
Today, many friends who are separated by distance, ensure their contact is kept alive by constant ‘chat’ sessions and ‘text’ messages as they are called. God is the Friend of all friends. When all other friends fade away, He is the one friend who will remain. But how do you get in touch with Him? He is available to us twenty-four hours of the day and night, seven days a week, t365 days a year. He is ever-ready to help us. How can we seek His help?
Prayer is the swiftest and surest way to establish a link with God. It cleanses your thoughts, purifies your mind and elevates your consciousness. It enables you to talk to God directly and much more effectively than you can, to people. For, you can be sure that God listens carefully to every word you say!
You do not need a cellphone or a bluetooth device to contact God! You need to be attuned, ‘in sync’ as they say, with the still, small voice that is heard deep within your heart.
In the beginning, we do not hear His voice; but let us be sure that He hears us! We may not see Him; but He sees us. And ultimately a stage comes in the life of every seeker when he sees God and hears His voice. For, God can be seen; He can be touched and felt; His voice can be heard. He is more real than all things which we perceive with the senses. But to be able to see Him and hear Him, effort is needed. This effort is to awaken deep longing, yearning for God. So it was that Sri Ramakrishna said, “Yearn for God even as a miser yearns for gold, as a lover for his beloved, as a drowning person yearns for a breath of air!”
It is not necessary for us to offer set prayers. Prayer should flow spontaneously out of a love filled heart. One look of the eye, one exclamation, may be more acceptable to the Lord than hundreds of set prayers offered in a mechanical way, day after day. Feeling is needed; emotion is needed. For, more important than the words, is the vibration of love which they carry.
God does not care for the form, the shape, the vocabulary of our prayer. It is the feeling that counts.
A poor farmer, returning home from the market after a long, tiring day, found that the wheel of his cart was about to come loose. He was in the middle of the woods, and his cart was loaded with produce.
Anxiously, he searched his pockets for the little prayer book, which he always carried with him. To his dismay, he found that he had forgotten to bring it with him.
He closed his eyes and began to pray thus, “Dear God, I have done something very foolish. I have left my prayer book at home, and my memory is not what it used to be. I don’t seem to remember a single prayer. So this is what I am going to do. I shall recite the alphabet—very very slowly—several times. Since, You know all the prayers, please put the letters together and form the right prayer for me!”
The Lord said, “This prayer is the best I have heard today—for it came from a heart that is simple, pure and sincere!”
It was William Law who said, “God does not care for the arithmetic of our prayers, how many they are. He does not care for the rhetoric of our prayers, how eloquent they may be; nor the geometry of our prayers, how long they be; nor the music of our prayers how melodious they are; nor the logic of our prayers however argumentative they may be; nor the method of our prayers, how orderly they be. But the sincerity and fervency of our prayers - how heartfelt they are.”
“One look of the eye, one exclamation, may be more acceptable to the Lord than hundreds of set prayers offered in a mechanical way, day after day. God does not care for the form, the shape, the vocabulary of our prayer. It is the feeling that counts”
Opening your heart to God is the most effective form of prayer. I urge my friends never, ever to forget their “daily appointment with God”, as I call it - a brief, simple prayer first thing when you get up and a quiet, reflective prayer before you fall asleep at night. Therefore, let us not miss our daily appointment with God. We take care to keep our appointments with clients, suppliers, business associates, and also with our doctors, dentists, bankers and lawyers. More important than all these is our daily appointment with Our Best Friend. Let us never fail to keep it! You may utter prayers from the scriptures; or use your own words when you pray. The language of the heart is the best for any prayer!
By Dada JP Vaswani
