THE WILL

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.