Faith – All the Spiritual Strength That One Needs!

Invoking the Blessings of Mother Divine, Sri Sai Saraswathi, upon all gathered here. Loving and Humble Salutations, oh Mother Divine, at Your Lotus Feet. Esteemed elders, dear brothers and sisters, Sai Ram to all of you.

In a clearing in a forest there stood a huge banyan tree. It had a gigantic trunk and mighty knolled prop roots, and sturdy branches. And on one such sturdy branch there was a lean twig on which sat a tiny sparrow. A slight breeze set the twig into a harmonic oscillation, and the sparrow chirped in with rhythm. The breeze slowly turned into a wind and the sparrow’s seat shook violently. But the sparrow just continued chirping with none to listen to its melody. The wind turned fierce and roared; the sparrow only twittered. And in the asymmetric battle that continued, the twig snapped, unable to bear the onslaught. What happened to the tiny sparrow?

It was September 28, 1995 . I was in my eighth standard. Bhagavan had given our entire class an interview with Him. I was fortunate enough to be sitting right at His feet and looked up and asked Him (mentally): “What happened to the sparrow?” At this point in time, Bhagavan was narrating the very same incident. He looked into my eyes and gleefully added, “It spread its wings and flew away.” The answered reached home.

Bhagavan then continued to explain, “Man lives in this world and builds for himself a home, housing in it all that he has acquired in life. And he sits in this house and twitters to the tune of life. But when the winds are not in favor and the world comes crashing around him, he hops about lamenting his plight.”

The tiny sparrow on that branch did not depend upon the twig, or on the branch, or on the gigantic trunk of the mighty banyan tree. It depended on its wings! So too in life, let us depend not upon mere twigs of passion and fashion, of pain and gain, of wealth and glory. Let us rather depend upon wings of Faith. Faith in His Name, in His Love, in His Glory, in His Benevolence, and in His Benediction!

Give us, Lord, the ability that we develop these wings of Faith, for when the tempest becomes more stormy than we can bear, we can spread these wings of Faith and glide effortlessly to our destinations.

A mother loves a child for she has Faith that it is her own. A child loves his parents for he has Faith that they are his own. I stand here to speak for I have the Faith that what I speak is what I feel. And on a lighter note, many of us would have unkempt hair if we did not have the Faith that the barber in the salon would cut our hair and not our neck.

Why go so far? You would not eat if you knew the food you eat would not be digested. You would not sleep if you had no Faith that you would wake up. You would not dare breathe if you did not have the Faith that the breath of air you’ve taken would ever come out. Life is verily Faith. And in this Life, man tends to move towards happiness. And Bhagavan puts both of them so close together when He says: