A boy's faith

In a village lived a priest. He would perform pûjā (ritualistic worship) and offer prasād (sacred offering of food) to God daily without fail. One day, he had to go out of the village for some work. So, before leaving he asked his son to offer prasād to God, without fail, in his absence.

The boy was overjoyed to be given such a responsibility! So, the next day, he woke up early in the morning, took a shower, enthusiastically placed the plate of prasād in front of the statue of God and sat there waiting for God to eat the food! But the statue of God would not move nor talk, leave alone eating the prasād! The boy had complete faith that God Himself would come and eat the prasād. But for a long time the statue of God did not show any sign of eating.

After waiting for some time, the boy could take it no longer! He pleaded, “O God, why don't you come and have the food that we have offered you? Don't you like this food?” When he heard no reply from God, the boy began to cry.

He said, “If you don't eat the food, I will dash my head to pieces right this moment, on this very altar!” So saying, the boy proceeded to strike his head against the altar. Just then, a great miracle took place. Seeing the boy's intense faith, the Lord Himself appeared and looking at the boy with a pleased smile, the Lord actually ate the prasād!

Seeing this, the boy was very happy. He joyfully ran to his mother with the empty plate of prasād to tell her about the Lord's appearance. When the mother saw the empty plate, she scolded him, “Son, you ate all the prasād by yourself! At least you could have waited till we distributed it to everyone in the house.” But when she heard her son's story, she was moved to tears. She said to him, “Really, you have great faith! All our lives, we did pûjā every day without fail, but you pleased the Lord in one day with your great faith!”