Turn to him with all your faults and failings

I share with him the agony of my heart. “I have this longing within me. But when I introspect and look within, I find I am full of flaws. The same heart yearns and the same heart harbours evil. I scold myself – how will God accept me? How can I be accepted at the door of Heaven?”

The Fakir gazes into my eyes. He gives me a divine look and says, “you are a child of God. Why do you go to the temple? In the temple, you sing the holy words. What do our scriptures say – there is one sentence in Gurbani: Tum mata pita, hum balak tere (Thou art our Father & our Mother). That is true. You are a child. God is your father and your mother.”

He then draws a parallel between God and mother. He added:

“A child yearns to be with his mother. He is full of dirt and filth. But the moment he sees his mother, he wants to run and embrace her. The mother first wants to cleanse the child and then hug it to her heart. But the child is impatient. He is in a hurry to clasp his mother. God is like our mother. He wants to clean and bathe his children before hugging them to his bosom. But we children are not willing to wait. We yearn to run and play in the mother’s lap. We want our mother. We cry, we wail for the mother unaware of the filth we carry. The mother too cannot bear the child’s cries. She hugs the child, and embraces him. If our longing is true, then even though we are filled with evil; even though we have committed sins, God will hear our plaintive cries and embrace us. He will say: Come my child. Come and play in my lap, for I love you and he will clasp you to his heart.”