A Boy Who Fed God
A noble man used to worship his family’s deity everyday with food offerings. One day he had to go out of his village for the day. He said to his son, Raman: Give the offering to the deity today. See that God is fed. The boy offered food to the deity in the shrine, but the image would neither eat nor drink nor talk. Raman waited a long time, but still the image did not move.
But he totally believed that God would come down from His throne in heaven, sit on the floor and eat. Again and again he prayed to the deity, saying: “O Lord, please come down and eat the food. It is already very late. Father will get angry if I did not feed you.” The deity did not say a word. The boy wept and cried: “O Lord, my father asked me to feed you. Why won’t you come down? Why won’t you eat from my hands?” The boy wept for some time with a longing soul. At last the deity came down smilingly from the altar in human form and sat before the meal and ate it. After feeding the deity, the boy came out of the prayer room.
His relatives said: “The worship is over. Now bring the Prasādam for us.” The boy said: “God has eaten everything, He did not leave anything for you today.” They entered the prayer room and were speechless with wonder to see that the deity had really eaten every bit of the offering. The moral of the story is that God does eat if you offer food with full faith, love, and devotion. Most of us don’t have the faith Raman had. We don’t know how to feed Him! It is said that we must have faith in God like a child or we shall not enter the supreme abode, the house of God.