World is experiencing calamities day after day. May the souls affected by these calamities rest in peace in God’s place and may the affected families on earth find strength to go through the tough time.
Calamities, though they disturb us, they also act as teachers. They make us think seriously about security of our beloved ones. They make us analyze our lifestyle to see if there is anything that we have to do to strengthen our efforts in securing ourselves.
They say calamities do not come with any prior notice. And when they come they change the life in a moment and the people are left wondering why and how it happened.
It is becoming more and more important to pay attention to age-old advices. By nature, as soon as the darkness starts spreading, the sinful thoughts start rising. To protect from those sinful thoughts wise people advice to be home before it gets dark. Nowadays the work lifestyle has become such that it is difficult to follow this advice. At least one can limit going out in dark only when needed.
It is risky to rely on the fact that somehow somebody will help. Even if there is anybody to help they may not be able to help due to limitations to what one can help. They say that it is God’s or Guru's grace that helps during calamities.
Acquiring grace of God is not just an individual but community effort as well. A time has to be allotted for this effort. The time after evening, they say, is a good time when whole family gets together - first to have dinner together in happy mood and then couple of hours before going to bed is a good time to get together and spend time in listening and reading beautiful stories of God from pothis (e.g. Shri Gajanan Vijay, Shri Saisatcharit) or puranas (e.g. Bhagwat Purana, Vishnu Purana, Shiv Purana etc) with an understanding that the stories from these scriptures are going to help everyone to acquire His grace that protects during calamities. Not only that, by following such lifestyle they are setting a good example. In a way they are doing social service, without even going out of home. When one family starts adapting this lifestyle, other families will also slowly follow.
The society as a whole has a responsibility to acquire God’s grace so that everyone in society lives a fearless life. For that, understanding God is very important. Abraham Lincoln, the great president of United States, and the great student of Bible, once quoted “Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God's side, for God is always right.” That’s the attitude society has to adapt. The human society as a whole needs to examine if we as society are doing what God wants us to do, rather than asking God to do what we want Him to do. That’s where stories from Puranas help.
Pothis and Puranas are written by the great devotees and sages of Indian continent who wished welfare of society. They describe the lifestyle to be adapted to attract the grace of God. Those devotees and sages spent a lot of their time and energy in writing those stories, just so that people can get information about making good use of human birth while living together in society. All the stories in the pothis and puranas emphasize the importance of remembering God all the time by calling His Name or establishing close association with saints who are Gods on earth. They contain numerous examples of persons who were saved from direst calamities because they called out the Name of God. Draupadi, Pralhad, Gajendra are few known examples.
Is society, and for that matter every member of society, not responsible for maintaining conducive environment for remembering God and acquiring His grace? Sages and followers of sages have been kind enough to translate, extract information from puranas in prevalent languages. Or the great devotees of saints have written stories of saints in regional languages. So there is no room to complain that one cannot understand those stories. What is needed is a strong desire to attract grace of God for everyone in the society. That desire alone is enough to transform the society and make this world a fearless place to live.
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