Symbols of the world's religions

               

ON THE TOPIC OF SUFFERING

Mani S. Irani

 
From the time I was little I knew that suffering, like everything else in creation, comes from God. I noticed how much suffering my loved ones had to go through in one way or another, especially my close family. Later I would wonder why the good people I knew received more suffering, while the not-good people I knew got away with whatever they did.

The answer came from within me that suffering must surely be a very good thing, such a good thing that God would want to share it with His special ones. I asked Father about it, and he said, "Never question God's Love and wisdom, my child; suffering is a passing thing given to you for your lasting benefit."

When you belong to the Lord, He takes over all that is yours — your failures, your victories, your joys, your sorrows, to work with as He wishes. With all the Baba-lovers that we know of going through all the suffering that we hear of, it is not easy to see all the compassion that we are assured of. This unseen compassion is spoken of by His great lovers in the past, and illustrated by a Perfect Master in a simple analogy of a village potter.

You may have been among one of the groups accompanying Eruch on a tour of Pimpalgaon Village in the old days when he took Baba-lovers around the village. One of the favourite sights was the village potter making a pot on a primitive wheel turned by hand.

While the clay is whirling around on the wheel, the potter is shaping the pot by whacking it with a wooden mallet. As his right hand is visibly raining these blows on the outside of the pot, his left hand is inside the pot, unseen, silently supporting and upholding it so that it does not break.

Thus a Perfect Master illustrates God's unseen compassion.

Avatar Meher Baba ki Jai!!!

 

LETTERS OF LOVE FOR MEHER BABA, pp. 592-593, Jane B. Haynes
1997 © EliNor Publications, Inc.

               

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