only praise

The beautiful fruit ‘grape’ has hidden in its spelling two ferocious animals. If we were to remove the first two alphabets from the word we would get the huge dark scary ‘ape’. If we were to remove the first one alphabet we would get the lustful animal hidden in man, ‘rape’; but if we were to remove the first and the last alphabets we could get the music ‘rap’. And of course if we were to remove nothing we would have the juicy fruit tasting delicious in our mouth. Life too offers us many tastes and shades and it’s totally up to us which ones we choose.

Many mouths though there are which must count the seeds in the juicy grape, or the thorns under the rose. Many eyes are there too which see half empty glasses rather than half filled ones. So much of the bright sunlight can be hidden by our negative thinking dark glasses!

Sadly our life passes away in the bickering of somebody who behaved badly with us or the aches and pains of our own body in stead of the gracious praise of the provision of this great body ship for a sometimes smooth and sometimes roughly tossed journey in the waves of an oceanic existence. A speck ourselves in its vastness we fight it to stand above its great tosses, forgetting that if we were to let go of our ores of pride and complains, the sail would get smooth helping us to become one with the great expanse. A new vision of gratefulness could transform every situation from a complaint to a praise.

When in 2004, Brother Parmeshwaram’s home was destroyed by the killer Tsunami in Tamil Nadu, he cried for his three children who were destroyed by the hungry waves. With his wife by his side he first searched for their little bodies and then for a little decent space to bury them. Grieving for this colossal loss he lost all hope to live and wanted to himself walk into the greedy waters as if to mock at their appetite. But the Lord had greater plans. The woman beside him, his wife by law searched the expanse of destruction with her eyes and found several children orphaned all around her. Her ears longing for the voice of her kids went a little deeper to hear the painful cries of these helpless ones. Picking them up one by one she widened her arms to hug 26 of them. Their need for a parent and hers for a child gave birth to a new home of love where today she is a mother to them all and her two  new blood kids. In all, the couple is today parenting 28 lives. Today they do not grumble for not getting what they wanted but are thankful for not getting what could have been worse.

“WHEN THE PEOPLE COMPLAINED, IT DISPLEASED THE LORD” – Numbers 11: 1