Sweet To Me is Your Will

A saintly faqir once lived on the outskirts of a village in northern India, and it was to him that the village people always went for advice. Suddenly, there was an epidemic that killed all the roosters, hens and chickens in the village, so the villagers went straight to the faqir.

“O faqir,” they told him, “we have lost all our hens and roosters, and even the little chickens. What shall we do?”

“There must be some good in it,” was the faqir’s reply, and nothing could induce him to say more.

A few days later a sickness of some kind struck down all of the villagers’ many dogs. Once again they went to the faqir. “Now, O faqir,” they told him, “every single dog in the village has died. We are without watchdogs and at the mercy of thieves. What shall we do?”

“God must have seen some good in this also,” the faqir told them.

In those days, before there were any matchsticks, everyone in India would cover their cooking fires with ashes to keep them alive. But a few days after all the dogs had died, every single cooking fire in the village mysteriously went out, all at the same moment. At this, the villagers were more distressed than ever. They told the faqir what had happened.

“This is another sign of the grace of God,” he said with all the serenity in the world.

“What grace can there be when we have no fire left with which to cook our food?” the villagers demanded of him.

“Wait and see. Wait and see,” said the faqir. “Have patience. It is not always a simple matter to discern the plans of God.”

Scarcely a day had gone by when a cruel and warlike king, accompanied by a huge army, passed through the countryside surrounding the village. Wherever he went, his soldiers killed, looted, burnt and destroyed with a savage and terrifying ferocity. When the king came near to the village of the faqir, he looked at it to see whether he should order it to be burnt and robbed. But when he saw that there was not a single cock crowing, not a single dog barking, and not a single fire smoking, he told his leading general, “That is a deserted village. It is not worth bothering about. Order the army forward to the next village.”

It was only then that the villagers came to understand the meaning of all that had happened. Going to the faqir, they offered him their heartfelt thanks.

“Ah brothers, all is now well with you,” said the faqir. “For where the Lord is pleased to abide, nothing can go wrong.”
_{Tales of the Mystic East}

Sweet to me is your will, O Lord;
but for your true Name, nothing do I seek.
_{Guru Arjan, Adi Granth}