Part One: The Search

Are you someone who has everything perfect around you..a perfect home, a sustainable career, a family, but yet you seem to feel incomplete? Do you seem to be one of those organised persons who plans the entire day, week, year and seem to have achieved all tasks from time to time, but you still feel restless during leisure? If you fall under any of the above, then like myself, your mind and heart is searching….

A famous saint once said, “The heart cannot rest until it finds its rest in God”:

I often thought it silly when Jesus’ desciples ask Him how to pray..something they have been doing for years to the same God. So why should it be any different? But now I understood. One of my favorite Jesuit priests once asked me “What is (and not who is) God to you?”

• If God is someone you pray to in times of a financial or employment crisis – its not God, its a magic bank / recruitment agent..
• If God is someone you remember when you are depressed – its not God, its a magic shrink..
• If God is someone you run to because someone misbehaved with you and you need to teach that person a lesson – its not God, its a magic super judge
• If God is someone you intercede to heal you when you are struck with an ailment – that’s a magic doctor

If you look closely at all of the above cases, we tend to see God as our ultimate miracle worker. Ofcourse, He’s the Father of all miracles, but that’s a one sided view. There’s something more to this than God just being a wonder-maker. This was one of the major doctrines that Jesus came to correct.

I’ll ask a few more questions:

• If you were told after many years by the parents who raised you that you were adopted, and that your birth mother was still alive, what would you do? Most of us, even if we wouldnt want the real parent back in our life would definitely go out to find who they were..
• Why do you fall in love with a person?
• Why are you close to one particular friend, from the rest of your buddies?

In all of the above, there is one common answer. We seek – the connection. It was this connection that Jesus restored in the prayer when He said to address God as “Our Father”. It is the same connection with which God spent beautiful moments with Adam and Eve – His creations in Eden. When we realise this, God will no longer be an ATM machine to us, but Someone whom we have a real bond.

Do you want to know how to experience this connection today? You will need a quite private place. Private because you need to be comfortable in the position you are in, without feeling awkward or self conscious if someone else sees you, similarly to avoid all distractions and disturbances…Close your eyes and take a deep breath. Let your imaginations take you to a mystical and beautiful place in nature where God is waiting. Let your heart remind you that God is happy to see you, irrespective what you did or didn’t do today. Hear God tell you “I am connected to you, the breath you breathe is My very own”