In but not of.

In,  but,   not  of.
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The other day when I was travelling in a bus bound for Nellai, the friend sitting by me asked me, “When will our bus reach Nellai?”

“Our bus? When was it transferred to our ownership?
May be yours, but, not mine.”

“Hallo! I am not talking about ownership. When will this bus reach Nellai?”

“Sorry. I don’t mean what you think I mean. I was just thinking about some people who don’t know the difference between ‘in’ and ‘of ’. Your enquiry came at that time; so I reacted that way. Sorry once more. We will be in Nellai in half an hour.”

“No need of any sorry. I think you have some sense of humour.”

“Not some, plenty. It is like cool drink in summer. We can never be happy in this world unless we have sense of humour.”

We often use ‘our’ to refer to things which are not at all ours, strictly speaking.

‘Our’ and ‘my’ are possessive pronouns; they must be used before things which belong to us fully.

My shirt is fully mine and I can use it as I please.

But when I say ‘India’ is my country, is it fully mine?

Can I use it as I use my shirt?

Not at all.

I call India ‘my country’ just because I was born in it and live in it.

One man who was considering of giving his daughter in marriage to a particular man wanted to know his economic condition and his status in society.

He said to his father, “I want my son-in-law to be a wealthy man. Can you tell me how rich is your family?”.

The man replied, “The house we live in is ours. All the fields around our village are ours. The total income that comes from these fields is enough to sustain a whole village.”

The man was very impressed and gave his daughter in marriage as desired.

But after the marriage his daughter told him that they were living in a rented house and not even an inch of land belonged to them.

Angered, he asked his daughter’s father-in-law to give explanation to his wrong wealth statement.

“There is nothing wrong in my statement. If the village we live in is ‘our village’, whatever belongs to our village is ours too. ‘Ours’ refers to all the villagers. Your misunderstanding of my statement is your mistake.”

We are committing the same mistake as regards ‘our’ world too.

We call this ‘our world’ only because we were born in it.

But this world does not belong to us and vice versa.

We may be in this world, but we are not of this world.

We are just travellers and our destination is the next world, Heaven.

Our starting point and finishing point is God.

We came from God and must return to Him.

Why did God create us in this world?

To know Him, to love Him, to serve Him and to return to Him in the end.

We can know God in two ways.
Through the universe God has created.

God has blessed us with reasoning power.

Everything in this world has a reason and cause behind it.

Every effect has a cause.

Nothing can produce itself.

If we use our reason we can find out that this universe of ours is the effect of a Superior Cause, God.

God cannot have a cause; He exists by Himself.

Anything that has a cause cannot be God.

It is only to know God through our reason that God created the universe before creating us.

Once we know Him we will start to love and serve Him.

God revealed Himself to us through Jesus Christ, His only eternal Son.

Through Faith, a free gift of God, we believe in the words of Jesus.

Being limited human beings we may not understand His words about unlimited God, but we believe in them as they are the words of God, who cannot by His nature tell lies.

We are in this world only to know God, to love Him and to serve Him.

Once we have done our duty we will have to leave this world for the next world to be united with God.

This world is not our permanent property.

To be short we are in this world, but not of this world.

We should love God, and serve Him.

Having been created only to love Him, we should love Him with our whole heart.

The love in our heart should express itself in action.

God being a spirit we cannot see him with our material eyes.

How can we express our love for Him?

By our actions.

It is for this God has given us our neighbours.

Our love for God must express itself in our love and service for our neighbours.

One who loves God will automatically love one’s neighbours.

We must serve God by serving our neighbour.

If we don’t serve our neighbour, we don’t serve God.

Whatever we do for our neighbour we do for God.

On the day of judgement God will judge us on the basis of our help done or not done for our neighbour.

Let us remember how Annai Theresa loved and served God by loving and serving her neighbours.

We are in this world only to love and serve God.

We are ‘in’ this world, but ‘of ’ the next world to go where we have been created.

Lourdu Selvam.