By Mekha Jude George –
Have you ever had an experience that made you wonder ‘Is this how God feels?’
When I was in 6th grade, jealous that my sister was getting to learn the keyboard and inspired by the rock stars on TV, I told my mom I wanted a guitar. She was keen but my dad wasn’t. As the result I ended using the pocket money I had saved up for two years to buy a Yamaha guitar for myself. I was excited at first but to everyone’s disappointment within six months of guitar classes, I quit. I didn’t really miss it during the rest of my teenage. I would occasional strum a few notes and let it be.
As I came to college I realized that there wasn’t anyone to play for prayer and I asked my dad to get my guitar from home and tried learning again for six months and failed profusely yet again. Soon people realized that I owned a guitar and borrowed it quite often. I was more than happy to lend it usually because I felt my guitar deserved a better owner.. It deserved to be played the way its supposed to be, not by a tone-deaf sloth like me.
A few weeks ago during our culturals, upon returning from lunch my classmates found my guitar broken into two. My friend told me the news and promised to try and fix it and I wasn’t really bothered at that time. A few days ago, the music team was discussing on how my guitar resembled a severed neck and how it was damaged beyond repair and how it was not worth it to try. They laughed about it and I laughed too.
Have you ever felt sad and not know why? Like your heart is just unhappy but everything seems normal. I was feeling that for a few days and today I found the reason; my broken guitar. I cried a lot wondering inside why the hell am I crying over a guitar I didn’t know how to play? Does its presence really make a difference to me? Honestly asking myself. True, I liked to be the owner of a great guitar but what’s really the point if I can’t play? As I cried and pondered, pondered and cried, I realized, it wasn’t my broken guitar, it was the attitude of the people who took responsibility over it. They were neither apologetic nor sad. In fact, they seemed quite unaffected to make jokes about it. As I asked God what to do… this is the analogy I got.
God and I were like me and my guitar. Sometimes our relationship would be in full swing and the other time we would barely talk. It’s like floods and droughts! The way I let my guitar be used by everyone, God also lets us go, because He wants us to be happy, His children to be happy. He finds joy in our laughter the way I found happiness to hear my guitar’s sound resonate in church. When we sin for e.g.; gossiping, we break our souls making it unable for us to experience true joy, true god. But I don’t think it’s sin that bothers God the most.
When He made us, I think He knew there was a risk of sin He just hoped the effort would still be worth. Our sins doesn’t grieve God as much as our apathy towards the sin. We are not sorry for most of our sins and I think that’s what hurts God the most. Nobody except for my friend showed any remorse on breaking my guitar. I know they can’t fix it and I can forgive them for their inability to do so but what I can’t forgive them for is their inability to say sorry. God doesn’t want us to fix our sins, we can’t go back in time and undo all our sins and He respects that inability but He did give us a heart that an apologize sincerely. Where did it go? I wonder if they would have tried harder if it was a senior’s guitar or even the guitar of someone who knew how to play. I feel worthless and I ask myself ‘ don’t I deserve an apology in the very least?’
Does the almighty God feel worthless compared to Satan, due to my choices? I wish I knew God enough to answer that. God is greater than every sin we can commit and He is able to forgive. We, His beloved children, take Him for granted and abuse His love and despite all that He loves us. That kind of loving, the kind of forgiving hurts like fire. I’m not writing this article as a whole new person who won’t sin again. My point is its karma. The way we treat God is the way the world is going to treat us. And if you ever ask God like I did ‘Do you understand what I’m going through?’ You can almost hear Him say, ‘You have no idea!’
PS: I brought my guitar to college thinking worship will bring me closer to Him. It didn’t work. If breaking it made me closer to Him, then despite the fact that it hurts bad now, its purpose for me is served.
Mekha Jude George is a student at St John’s National Academy of Health Sciences.
What a fantastic piece of literature.. 😍