In and Out of the Flock! God is Always Around the Block!

By Baa-Baa Oh!

She was born in a family where religion—in the sense of beliefs and associated rituals and customs—was practised in a way, but not forced upon anyone, including her. When she was a child, her mother would recite some prayers and ask her to repeat them while she cooked in the kitchen. She remembered her parents telling her to ‘fear God’. That’s about all the religion she had as a child.

Having done her primary schooling and, then, higher studies in multi-faith institutions, she had quite a few friends from different religious backgrounds, and almost none from the faith into which she was born.

God and leading a God-oriented life were nowhere in her daily diary. As she grew older, her life was all about studies, watching television, going to the movies and sometimes parties, and occasionally treating herself to buying things like handbags and junk jewellery.

This way life of hers came to an end after a jolt of sickness, which actually made her think about God. The company of many of her friends also started filtering out after she began working in an institution where almost everyone belonged to the faith in which she was born into. The lifestyle of these people seemed so different to hers—in the beginning, it was quite a culture shock. There were certain things that she noticed about these people that she found claustrophobic and insular. But repeated interactions with them, on an everyday basis, made her begin to imagine that the way they were following the faith was right and that the more she remained in their company, the more God would be pleased and that He would grant her entry into Heaven.

God had given her a mind to think, but now she did not want to think for herself. She wanted to go with the herd. Working in a place where interaction was almost wholly with people who belonged to the faith into which she was born, her condition became the reverse of how it was when she was a child, when almost all her friends were from faith backgrounds other than the one she had inherited. Soon, almost all the friends she had were only from this one faith background. For a while, she felt sort of safe with things being this way. She thought she was helping these people uplift her co-religionists. The more she did that, the more she began thinking and behaving like the herd and less like the individual she once was.

A substantially long period of being connected with people who thought alike and wanted everyone to think the way they did began to rust her brain and mind, and her heart too! She had forgotten to connect with God directly. Somehow, the idea had come to be stuck in her heart and mind that being only with this one flock was safe and comfortable for her. She was afraid to let go of the flock and be free to connect with God directly.

God has its own way to bestow His blessings. With no particular effort on her part, the herd of which she was a part slowly began moving away from her life. At first, she felt rather afraid—she thought this would disconnect her from God. But soon, she began feeling free and light, in heart and mind. She began feeling much more deeply connected with God directly. She realised she did not have to follow the herd in order to have a relationship with God.

Today, she has a good mixture of friends from different faith backgrounds, and not just one. She is happy and at peace to connect with God at her pace. Her love for God, her piety, her devotion, are aspects that only God can judge, not the herd that she had once stuck to. She now believes that everybody can connect to God directly. “Let everyone graze on their field”, she explains, “while I graze on mine!”

“God”, she says, “listens to the voice of every little lamb!”