The workings of God

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Father Dominic Emmanuel [1]

The tiny advertisement daily for Amul easily catches one’s attention, and the one last week, paying tribute to Verghese Kurien, the man credited with the White Revolution of India thereby transforming the lives of the poor farmers in Gujarat and elsewhere, was simply superb.

The accompanying words read, “Thank you for giving us hausla (encouragement), pragati (development), anand (happiness).” Other obituaries eulogised his achievements in glowing terms such as, “The greatest Indian after Gandhi”. Dr Kurien’s greatest achievement, however, was to instil self-confidence of the poor farmers and to use their potential to change the course of history.
It is legends such as him who give us an insight into some of the qualities of our divine master who “encourages” us to “develop” ourselves so that we could grow in indescribable “happiness” or “bliss”. My belief is that God, who has brought us into existence purely out of his love for us, wishes at all times to bring out the best in us. It is a different matter that out of our own fears and anxieties some of us do not make it big. For instance, we find in the Bible God saying, “Fear not; for I am with you. Be not dismayed; for I am your God. I will strengthen you…” (Isaiah 41:10), or again, “You have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that you should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain…” (John15:16). The Psalmist says, “You have made them (us) a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honour. You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their feet” (Psalm 8: 5-6). After all, the Bible holds that God made us in His own image and likeness.
According to Christian belief, God is one but has three persons, “the father, the son and the holy spirit” — the Holy Trinity — who live in perfect harmony. Made in God’s image, we are expected to emulate the example of the Trinity. John Donne famously wrote, “No man is an island.” We need one another for our “encouragement”, “development” and “happiness”. That is how we are made and that is what we witness in nature where everything is inter-dependent. Therefore, the Bible says, “Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others” (Philippians 2:4).
We find this happening in the life of the early Christian community, where we are told that the simple people having discovered the workings of God in their lives were so united in heart and mind that no one claimed their possessions to be their own. Would it not be wonderful if we could live like that?

Father Dominic Emmanuel is the director of communication of the Delhi Catholic Church.