God's Way

(inspired by one of Paulo Coelho's novel)

I just read a short novel by Paulo Coelho recently. The prologue of this novel was an eye opener. Here is the part that took my breath away

“A Spanish missionary was visiting an island when he came across three Aztec priests. “How do you pray?” the missionary asked. “We have only one prayer,” answered one of the Aztecs. “We say, God you are three, we are three. Have pity on us.” “A beautiful prayer,” said the missionary. “But it is not exactly the one that God heeds. I am going to teach you one that’s much better."
The missionary taught them a Catholic prayer and then continued his path of evangelism.

Years later, when he was returning to Spain, his ship stopped again at the island. From the deck, the missionary saw the three priests on the shore and waved to them. “Padre! Padre!” one of them called, approaching the ship. “Teach us again that prayer that God heeds. We’ve forgotten how it goes.”
"It doesn’t matter,” responded the missionary, witnessing the miracle. And he promptly asked God’s forgiveness for failing to recognize that He speaks all languages. ”

How many times we feel that our way of life, including religion, faith and custom, is better than everybody else’s, especially of those whose life and faith are different from ours. We often forgot that God has created His people different from one another - to complete each other. Human tends to judge anything that’s different from them as bad and threatening. In that limited point of view, we end up missing out a lot.



God presents Himself in everything and everyone around us. He presents His beauty in each of His creation, so who are we to judge others differently or who are we to arrogantly declare our superiority against the others?

As the author of this novel brilliantly concluded in his opening note
“Rarely we realize that we are in the midst of the extraordinary. Miracles occur all around us, signs from God show us the way, angels plead to be heard, but we pay little attention to them because we have been taught that we must follow certain formulas and rules if we want to find God. We do not recognize that God is wherever we allow Him to enter.”