iMonk | January 2009

Navadwip, India — Friday, January 23rd

Wake-up call

Somebody broke into the altar room in the middle of the night, stole some jewelry from Srimati Radharani and Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, and absconded with the small Gopal deity...

Who would do something so stupid? Steal from a temple, in Navadwip? And why did Krishna allow this to happen?

Who can say? The Lord works in mysterious ways...

Perhaps, to paraphrase from my Krishna unconscious blog, Krishna does things like this to make us more conscious of His presence:

It is horrible that Krishna has to force us to be more aware of Him, to impress Himself on our consciousness in such a negative way, but perhaps that is the only way to get our attention, sometimes...

So perhaps this theft is the Lord's way of saying,

man-mana bhava mad-bhakto / mad-yaji mam namaskuru

"I am here. I am not a statue! Pay attention. Don't neglect Me!"

Apparently the burglar broke into the altar room because the decorative wrought iron security gate was not locked. (The burglar gained entry by removing the hinges of the locked wooden door.)

So it was the pujari's fault!

Ostensibly, yes, but rather than look for somebody to blame, we should realize that we are all culprits, that this is Krishna's way of reminding us all to become more serious about our sadhana and our seva, to be more diligent and vigilant in our devotional duties and service responsibilities.

If this was Krishna's objective, the tactic worked (at least temporarily)! The delayed mangala arati was unusually well attended (the hubbub woke everybody up!) and the audacious theft was all that anybody could talk about, before, during, and after the arati...

And so it was that, perhaps satisfied that He now had our full attention, Krishna had His pawn, the hapless thief, apprehended within a few hours (before breakfast).

Tags: Service | Deity | Slokas

URL: http://www.imonk.net/09/january4.html
Layout by iMonk — January 23rd, 2009.