What does this image portray to us? The son is jumping in air to be caught by his father. He has reached an age where he is cognizant enough that if not caught by his father, he would land badly injuring himself. But the son has faith in his father and nevertheless jumps into air. And sure enough he is caught by the father. Can we term this as STRONG FAITH?

Once there was a drought in a remote village and people were quite perturbed by this. The villagers took counsel of a wise sage living nearby. The sage gave a date and asked every villager to assemble at a point where they would pray to the Lord sincerely for relief from this natural disturbance. On the designated date everyone was present. One child amongst the whole village brought an Umbrella. Can we term this as STRONG FAITH?

As Radhanath Swami explains  in one of his discourse, the above two instances can be termed as strong faith. The Swami explains that when we pray to GOD, we should not be thinking, “Will my prayers be heard, will my prayer bear fruits, maybe the Lord will come, i hope He comes, i only hope He exists. He explains that this is a very dangerous position. Anybody who practices chanting the holy names on a rosary (whether a Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Jew, Buddhist, or whichever religion one follows) should not have these thoughts kill him. These thoughts are a resultant of weak faith.

Somebody has very rightly said, “Faith in GOD is believing in GOD when common sense tells you not to”.  Common sense which they say is not found commonly does not has its foothold in the domain of spirituality.  When situations creep in our life which are incomprehensible to our logic or analysis, strong faith in GOD is what keeps us ticking. Those who fail to tick are products of doubts. In this regard a great saint St Thomas Aquinas has said that, “To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible”.

Radhanath Swami says that the most rudimentary principle to be able to Love GOD is strong foundational faith in the Lord. Try re-evaluating our faith in GOD by hypothetically thinking that we meet with an accident and we lose our eyesight. I am not sure how much i would tick !!! But now i know for sure that Radhanath Swamis’ and other great saints ideal faith is what i should be striving for.

The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason – Benjamin Franklin