A Heart Check-up!

 

Our heart does not have the capacity to maintain joy, peace and tranquility/ on its own. It looks for external factors to maintain all these.  The biggest struggle for mankind is to know what one should actually feed in to keep the heart in a constant satisfied state. And for that most of the time we want to rely on our emotions and feelings to dictate us as to what we should be doing to make it happy. Immanuel Kant in his observation concludes that we do things either to make us happy or to avoid pain. And mind, that is the false indicator to gauge if our heart is in good health.

For ages people complied with Immanuel Kant’s observation and struggled to maintain a good state of one's heart. I am not referring to the physical health of the human heart but  the state in which it has the capacity to produce a quality life. We all fail to know what the original state of the human heart is. Unless we truly are aware of it we will constantly misunderstand to feed it with what we think is needed and right. The Bible gives us a true estimation of it by saying, "The heart is more deceitful than anything else, and incurable — who can understand it?" And therefore while Jesus pointed out about the human heart He said  to be careful of what proceeds out of the heart rather than what goes inside in the form of food. He gave a few examples of the kind of evil it can produce. "For from the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, sexual immoralities, thefts, false testimonies, slander. These are the things that defile a person.". 

But if you notice, religion talks a different language altogether, which doesn't have any connection to maintain a clean pure satisfied heart and produce good thoughts to maintain a clean life. Rather it is satisfying people with rituals and systems which have no connection to keep a person from fragmentation. The heart is created to know its Savior and it depends on our efforts to know the true God and find for oneself the Savior. Instead of knowing Him, we create our own God and use rituals and practices to please the God we make and use it to satisfy the heart. When the heart fails to meet the true Savior, hopelessness overshadows and keeps a man in a state of restlessness. Once it finds the Savior, it reaches to a perfect state of harmony and peace.

The one who estimated the true state of the human heart has the capacity to clean it from all unrighteousness. He said what is recorded in the Bible "Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God". To meet God, our sins and wrongdoings which separate us from Him should be cleansed and made a space to contain the sovereign God. Bible says, "you are the temple of the living God". And when we invite Him into our heart our state of hopelessness disappears, tranquility seeps in and the peace of God and joy will be overflowed. Let me end with this prayer. "May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that... you may abound in hope".

 

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Dirty Road vs Rough Road

I would like to narrate a most regular activity of my existence but it taught me one of the most profound life’s truths. I travel to the city from where I live and it has two ways by which I could reach it. A beautiful broad highway and a narrow, potholed filled narrow way. My challenge comes when I travel by this beautiful highway and in a particular area of the highway the gutter water gushes and overflows on most of the days on to the road. Travelling by bike poses me with a serious problem as I have to ride my bike on this filthy water and it is nearly impossible to avoid the splashing of this gutter water over me. My problem is that I know its dirty water but at the same time helpless as I want to reach my destination in a broad comfortable road in less time, all the while the thought running in my mind that my whole body is dirty. There is also this narrow short road that I could take to reach the same destination but its filled with potholes making my journey miserable, full of pain and longer duration. Stay with me as I intend to compare it with life journey

In our urge to reach the destination faster some of us wouldn’t mind taking the broad, dirty road as long it takes us to our intended destination faster. The narrow, rough road with its difficulties will mercifully lead me to my destination clean from infection, though I have to intentionally make few sacrifices on the way. When I drew parallels to what the Bible says, it shook me up. Jesus while giving an analogy to His disciples said, “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”.

Today, roads with shortcuts filled with fun and pleasure seem to excite people the most. People don’t mind to pollute their mind, soul and body for self-gratification and become filthy in the process. They live in this false belief that they are enjoying life to the fullest, outsmarting others who take the narrow, long, suffering filled road. The ones taking the narrow road also reach the destination but at the cost of few sacrifices. The world prefers the short way as long as it keeps them happy. I am not suggesting a deliberate hard way but a clean way because the journey that seems to be difficult helps us to be clean in the process. The destination that takes you to an eternal home needs sacrifices from all the evil, selfish pleasures and demands holiness and right relationship with the Savior. It is impossible to accept Jesus' life philosophies and reject Him. However, accepting Him as your Savior gives purpose and meaning in life. Jesus who rose from the dead after three days and became a historical figure, could have always avoided the suffering of the cruel cross, but there is a message of salvation associated with His sacrifice. It is better to take a long rough road and be right with a clean conscience than enjoy the broad road and be infected and filthy. Would you like to know more about this Savior who has assured salvation of our souls and who guaranteed eternity with him? You may check the link in the twitter

  

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Paying a price to adopt ignorance!

 

In your life journey you will often come across few categories of people. The ones who are ignorant of facts and realities of life but care less because of various personal reasons. One of the primary reasons is there are no benefits of money and therefore it is not appealing to them. The second category of people are the ones who keep defying the truth and the life realities because they think they know everything and what they know is the final truth. The third category of people are the ones who are too lost in themselves and are existentialist; to eat and be merry for the day and live unconcerned for tomorrow.

King Solomon has written more than 3,000 proverbs, which can be found in the Bible. He raises a relevant question to our topic today. “How long, inexperienced ones will you love ignorance, how long will you scorners enjoy mocking and you fools hate knowledge?”.  People want to just exist devoid of adopting the truth and continue to live outside the moral framework. Today, for a majority, it is just a mere existence with people’s goal connected only to money. Why is that everything should be connected to money, when it doesn’t have the exclusive power to add value to life? Have you realized it, yet? No doubt our basic needs are connected to it, but then it is craved to acquire luxury and pleasure, which are short-lived and unsatisfying.

We don’t want to know the truth because we are comfortable with our outdated traditions in the form of a religion. Let me quote Sati system for an example, The ancient Hindu tradition called sati, wherein a widow would throw herself on her husband’s pyre and burn to death, was initially a voluntary act considered courageous and heroic, but it later became a forced practice.

Raja Ram Mohan Roy, the great reformer from Bengal fought many societal evils prevalent in the Hindu society of Bengal and Sati pratha was one of the chief ones. William Carey, a Christian missionary was the first man who led the campaign for abolishing the sati custom in Calcutta. The first formal British law was imposed in 1798, only in the city of Calcutta but the practice continued in surrounding regions. When practices and traditions are tagged into a bracket of religion, even a cruel practice finds endorsement. Sati is one among may such practices.

Are we able to question our tradition and our practices? Or are we too naïve or arrogant to evade truth because we are comfortable with what gratifies us and discounts us from all moral obligations? The biggest truth is we are all going to die one day leaving all our wealth behind. But the truth beyond is that we are going to live eternally, just that the destination can be different for different people. Heaven and Hell are reality because the Bible talks about it. The fact that Jesus resurrected, and lives sounds like a tale for many because there are already many stories revolving around, some morally degrading, yet finds people’s appeal. At the end of the day many think why it should bother me much. But we fail to realize that it can cost our eternity. The other reason we don’t want to give a thought is because we have tagged this greatest event to a religion, and we have classified ourselves under various religions. Therefore, we don’t want to accept that salvation can give hope in this life and life to come. C. S. Lewis brilliant in his philosophy argued that people choose to go to hell, and they lock the doors from the inside. They continue to reject every offer. Ignorance and refuting truth both are dangerous. Jesus’s jubilant victory from the death is the hope to mankind. And this means His offer to inherit heaven is worth our effort to find it. The hope offered is the blessing eternal. Find a copy of the Bible in your language and read to find the truth.

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Happy Mother's day!

Mother’s Day is celebrated all over the world. And in this regard, good wishes and notes of appreciation are circulated among each other in various social platforms. The funny thing about this celebration is that all these messages and notes of appreciation seldom reaches the mother.  I am not sure how many of us express our gratitude and appreciation to our mothers. Most often people forget the extent to which mothers are a blessing to their children. I hope all who have mothers right now, will agree with me on this.

How many of us realise and acknowledge their presence? How many of us thank them for all the sacrifices they do for us especially when we are kids? Do we ever realise it? As children we often view them as resource point. Right from enjoying good food, to extracting money whenever we need and to gratify our selfish needs. Yet, mothers are always there to express their love and comfort when children need them, especially in our most vulnerable times. They are the symbol of trust. They know how to trust their children and to believe in them irrespective of any failures.

Unfortunately, there is other side of reality where children fail to understand them and end of hurting them in many ways, especially when they do not get things they want, in the process, end up disrespecting them. This leaves mothers to live in pain of never being respected or understood. I notice in many cases, when children are educated, they quite often see their mothers as dumb and outdated. Wish children understand the wisdom in which they have made us who we are today.

The best gift God has endowed to all of us is a mother. When God plans our lives, He decides on the womb and time we are supposed to be born in this earth. In one of the passages in the book called Psalms in the Bible, the author portrays how miraculously we are born, and it goes like this to say, “For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your works, And that my soul knows very well. Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, The days fashioned for me, When as yet there were none of them. How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How great is the sum of them!”.  Unless we acknowledge this God and express our gratitude it is very difficult to thank our mothers. The love of God is the covering and fills our heart with love and gratitude.  The greatest Ten Commandments of the Bible has an ordinance regarding the mother it says, “Honor your father and mother so that you may have a long life in the land that the Lord is giving you.”. Would you express your gratitude and be thankful to them?

 

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The Billion-dollar industry!

 

Photo by Dainis Graveris

Everything is a commodity in the era that we live in. The success of an industry usually depends on the annual turnover, but is now pushed further to see how much it can make in an hour, even shorter, in a minute. Wealthy people in the world have statistics to tell how much is their turnover in a minute. Every man is dreaming to climb the ladder to find himself rich beyond one’s imagination. Money is our new God! And we are ready to chase it by all means and at all costs. As I was browsing the daily news, this particular information caught my attention. The screenshot of a short description of a course being offered by a private college in Utah has gone viral because the private liberal arts college is offering an entire class on porn in the academic year 2022-23. In these classes, students will "watch pornographic films together" as part of the curriculum. How do we take this? I am sure most of us must be going through mixed feelings.

I don’t want to cut right to the ethics of it, but let me check your view on this if you are a parent. How excited are you to know there is such a course and how likely would you want your child to be part of the course? I know many are finding it alarming to even think of such a strange possibility, but that’s the reality how the world is heading today. Porn is a billion-dollar industry. All are excited as long as it is not their mother, sister and daughter. But let me tell you this, after having had work experience in an organization which works towards combating sex trafficking, child sexual assault, cybersex trafficking, I have noticed there were mothers who sold their own daughters to this industry, all for money.

Today, the media gives new names to all these crimes. Most of the time they are fancy, enticing and becomes a social status. But the Bible calls it only one thing, and that is “sin”. We are not comfortable to name it as sin because we think it is too religious. But the fact is, the Bible says, we are all sinners. It says, “We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”. Therefore, the effects of sin are constantly handed down to our children and to their children. And we have a new society with sin becoming a fashion, a professional course offered by a university, like what we are reading today. Unless we understand crime from sin perspective, we think it’s ok to indulge.

Do you notice you don’t need to teach your children to do bad, but you have to teach them to do good? That is because bad comes naturally as we are born in sin. And news article like this tells us that the world is constantly thinking new ways, irrespective of how derogative it could be, to make it a professional, skillful and in some cases philanthropic.

Sin has the capacity to make us helpless. The Bible declares, “the wages of sin is death”. It further tells us with sin, our conscience  settles for dead works. A religious ritual cannot save your soul from eternal damnation, you need a person whose sacrifice for our sin and His resurrection can help us deliver from the bondage of sin and from sinful guilt. Since, one man in history who rose from the dead is true and historical, it is worth checking what our life can mean now and after death. The Bible says we all will face the judgement and the ones who lived all their life in sin lands in a place called hell. This is not a genie story but the truth because of the living God. Would you want to be delivered from the clutches of sinful habits that have ruined your peace and joy?

Reference:

Hindustan Times

 

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