HOW TO HAVE JOY OUT OF LIFE - 6
Practical suggestion No. 3.
If you would have joy of life, fill your heart with love – love of God, love of your fellow-men, love of brother birds and animals, love of nature, love of yourself. Where there is love there is joy. If there is one thing India and the nations need today to come out of the dark night in which we find ourselves, it is a resurgence of love.
I read of a dying miner, trapped in a coal-mine. Before he died, he scribbled a few words to his wife. He wrote: “I love you more than you will ever know. Take care of the children and raise them to love and serve the Lord. I am holding on to the hem of His garment, and there is no fear in my heart. I die a happy man!” When rescue workers reached the victim, eight days after the accident, they found the note attached to his safety-lamp.
The brief message, written in a dark, underground death-chamber, is an eloquent tribute to the miner. The miner knew how to get joy not only out of life but even out of death. So, even in those harrowing circumstances, he could write: “I die a happy man!” His heart was filled with the love of God, the love of his family, the love of his fellow-beings. Wherever there is love, there is joy, - happiness and fun.
We often feel there is fun in teasing others. There were some labourers engaged in the work of construction of a building. They had taken off their shoes. The students wished to have some fun. So they took away the shoes of the labourers and hid them behind bushes. They thought it would be fun to watch the labourers search their lost shoes. Beloved Dada learnt of this, and he said to the students: “Come, I shall show you how to have better fun.”
He asked the students to keep the shoes in their original places and insert a rupee coin in every shoe. Then, Beloved Dada said to them, watch the faces of the workers when they wear the shoes, and you will have the greatest joy of life.
The students followed the directions. When the labourers came and found rupee-coin in their torn, tattered shoes, they could not believe their eyes. They felt astonished beyond words. As the students watched the happy faces of the workers, they said to each other: “Surely, there is greater fun in loving, in giving, than in teasing.”
Practical suggestion No. 3.
If you would have joy of life, fill your heart with love – love of God, love of your fellow-men, love of brother birds and animals, love of nature, love of yourself. Where there is love there is joy. If there is one thing India and the nations need today to come out of the dark night in which we find ourselves, it is a resurgence of love.
I read of a dying miner, trapped in a coal-mine. Before he died, he scribbled a few words to his wife. He wrote: “I love you more than you will ever know. Take care of the children and raise them to love and serve the Lord. I am holding on to the hem of His garment, and there is no fear in my heart. I die a happy man!” When rescue workers reached the victim, eight days after the accident, they found the note attached to his safety-lamp.
The brief message, written in a dark, underground death-chamber, is an eloquent tribute to the miner. The miner knew how to get joy not only out of life but even out of death. So, even in those harrowing circumstances, he could write: “I die a happy man!” His heart was filled with the love of God, the love of his family, the love of his fellow-beings. Wherever there is love, there is joy, - happiness and fun.
We often feel there is fun in teasing others. There were some labourers engaged in the work of construction of a building. They had taken off their shoes. The students wished to have some fun. So they took away the shoes of the labourers and hid them behind bushes. They thought it would be fun to watch the labourers search their lost shoes. Beloved Dada learnt of this, and he said to the students: “Come, I shall show you how to have better fun.”
He asked the students to keep the shoes in their original places and insert a rupee coin in every shoe. Then, Beloved Dada said to them, watch the faces of the workers when they wear the shoes, and you will have the greatest joy of life.
The students followed the directions. When the labourers came and found rupee-coin in their torn, tattered shoes, they could not believe their eyes. They felt astonished beyond words. As the students watched the happy faces of the workers, they said to each other: “Surely, there is greater fun in loving, in giving, than in teasing.”
(Written by: J P Vaswani)
-to be continued
