Most of us experienced, and is experiencing perhaps, the feeling of being trapped in a world where we feel that we don’t belong. The result is we do not do our job well, for we do not love the job that we are doing. Similarly, we live our lives in a world that we can not call as ours. In turn, our lives become miserable. But in due time, we learn to love our job, as well as the “strange world” where we are situated, and eventually the world where we once felt loneliness and isolation becomes a world of our own
Howard Fast’s novel ‘The Outsider’ presents
to us a person’s story about his distrust and doubt with God’s Will, especially
in his vocation as a rabbi. Rabbi David Hartman, the protagonist in Fast’s
novel, found himself trapped in a small town of Leighton Ridge, with the social
struggle being experienced by the town people brought by the post war, Second World War, and to add-up to this, his personal vocation crisis. However, all of these difficulties
were overcome by Rabbi Hartman for almost a quarter of a century during his
service to the small and yet progressive Jewish Congregation. The consequences
of being a Jew, his divorce with his atheist wife, jail detention due to his
participation with an anti-segregation movement, nightmares caused by the war,
etc., All of these, problems if we may call them, had come to David’s life and
yet he was left standing still, just like a coconut tree left still at position
after a typhoon passed by. But again just like a coconut tree invaded by a rhino
beetle in it “ubod”, David survive the calamities and challenges of his time
but a crisis had kept its existences within David’s inner persona
In his search for answers to his doubts and distrust to God’s Will,
David had started a silent crusade within himself and for himself. While he is
reading the published compilation of his sermons he had realized how grandeur
his life had been since his first step had been imprint in the “rough” and “sandy”
soil of Leighton Ridge, since he began following the bitter and yet sweet Will of God.
Most of the time in our life we
tend to question the Will of God, asking “Why Lord?”, “Why does this happen
Lord?”, “Why Lord, why?”
We never realize that we were made
not more than to asked questions but to listen and to observe, and to absorb and analyze
what we had heard and saw around us. If however I commit a mistake on saying that we were made to listen more than to question, may the dear Lord enlighten
me with the mystery of why we have only one mouth and not three for us to use
to asked more, than to listen and observe with our two ears and two eyes. God
created us with two eyes and two ears to see more and to hear more, and with
one mouth to ask less. God’s Will is
very mysterious. But unlike other mystery, His Will is always towards goodness.
Even thought how bitter and painful it is, in the end it will be as “sweet as a
fresh honey serve in a silver platter”. We only need to learn to perceive
things the way God perceives. And by this, learning to let God’s Will works in
our life will follow with the feeling of delight and happiness.
