God's Love

I am totally intrigued with Gandhi. He was interested in and experimented with everything. He reminds me a lot of DeRay. Always willing to delve into the unknown and give it a try. Some of the things he learned, he did to save money and live more austerely.  When he was practicing law, he decided to starch and press his own collars, as to have them done professionally cost almost as much as to buy new. His first try he got too much starch and it kept flaking off. The other barristers made fun of him, saying there was professional help. Eventually, he learned to do it perfectly and his collars were as shining and sharp as any of the others.  He decided to learn to cut his own hair.  He could do the front fine with a mirror but the back posed a problem. Again they taunted him, asking him if he used an egg beater. Instead of buying bread, they used a hand grinder to make home meal bread. He read books on delivering babies and how to care for infants. Behold, he was called on to deliver his last child as neither the doctor nor midwife made it. He was perfectly calm because he had studied. He nursed his children back to health, often going against the advice of doctors since they were vegetarian and they didn’t want to use chicken broth or eggs. Once while on a walk for relief after being with his young son day and night, he was impressed to wrap him in something or other until his fever broke. Food and health were a big part of his passions; also exercise.

To pacify his Christian friends, he read the Bible.

“I could not possibly read through the Old Testament. It sent me to sleep.” But he read it -  "with much difficulty and less interest or understanding". Have I read straight through the Bible? I cannot believe the books he read and studied and memorized. Evidently, he didn’t waste any time playing games on his i-Pad. While he didn’t like the Old Testament, “The New Testament produced a different impression. The Sermon on the Mount went straight to my heart.”

“Resist not evil – smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other.”

“And if any man taketh thy coat, let him your cloak too' delighted me beyond measure."

Throughout the book, he tells of experiences when God saved him; stop him from sinning.

Someone had arranged accommodations for him and a companion in Portsmouth probably not realizing it was a house of ill repute. They were playing games, then the conversation became a little rank and before he realized it, he had set down his cards and was standing up to follow when God uttered the blessed warning: “What is the devil in you boy?  Be off quick.”

“I didn’t know how God works in us.

I only know that God had saved me.

But in all my trials of a spiritual nature as a lawyer

I can say that God saved me.”

“When every hope is gone, 'when helpers fail and comforts flee,' I find that help arrives somehow, from I know not where. Supplication, worship, prayer are no superstition; they are acts more real than the acts of eating, drinking, sitting or walking. It is no exaggeration to say that they alone are real, all else is unreal.” 

He writes about how he had no definite plan on how to write his story. He didn’t use diaries or documents. “I write as the spirit moves me. All conscious thought and action are directed by the spirit.

I have not seen Him.

Neither have I known Him.

I have made my faith in God as my own.

I have no word for characterizing my belief in God.

As I write I follow the voice within.”

Gandhi does not like the Christian concept that only Jesus Christ can offer us eternal life. God has intervened in his life enough for him challenge the belief that only Christians are saved.

“I came to the conclusion long ago that all religions were true and that also that all had some error in them, and while I hold by my own religion, I should hold other religions as dear as Hinduism. So we can only pray, if we were Hindus, not that a Christian should become a Hindu; but our innermost prayer should be that a Hindu should become a better Hindu, a Muslim a better Muslim, and a Christian a better Christian.” --Mahatma Gandhi

I have no trouble believing Gandhi’s life was directed by God. That he was called to help make all men equal; to make the world a better, fairer, safer place to live. His sacrifices were colossal. He was noble and true and listened to the voice of God just as did Eugene Orr and Darius Gray.

Still he was imprisoned for many years

upon many occasions in both

South Africa and India,

by autocratic (synonymous with hierarchy or patriarchy?) men.

He was assassinated by his own countrymen

receiving three bullets in the chest
at close range.