Loving Sai Ram and greetings from Prashanti Nilayam. This is the soccer season and football fever has gripped the whole world for two weeks now. There are at least a billion people glued to televisions, web portals and other media channels everyday following the fortunes of different teams. While all this is happening, there is one student of Swami’s college who wants to view the whole thing in a totally different perspective. When you read the below narration of ‘soccer with a difference’, you are not only going to be entertained like watching any conventional game of soccer, but also are going to bring a paradigm shift in the way your play the soccer of your life. Over to the Sai student now -

Swami says - Life is a game, play it. Life follows a script that runs parallel to soccer. Fate can be ‘rough’ and ‘foul’ things for us even before ‘half-time’. There may occur junctures in our lives where the ‘referee’ called destiny, may erringly flash on us the ‘red-card’ of failure for a non-existential ‘off-side’. We are then forced to pay the ‘penalty’. We may then step on the ‘banana’ peel of despair, slip and force the ‘tie’ into ‘injury-time’. To add insult to injury, we become party to the ‘self-goal’ of self-doubt. ‘Will I even last the length of the game?’- we begin to wonder. Life seems too tough an opponent to ‘tackle’ and we resign to our ‘posts’. Just when we think we are cornered, we notice the Captain (read: God) ‘bicycle’ from around the ‘corner’. He comes to you and says -

“Little one, let us play ‘possession’ football. Tap the ball onto My side, ‘pass’ your troubles onto My feet and I’ll dribble past them for you.”

This done, in no time you realize that you have scored the ‘golden goal’, thanks to the (Holy) ‘Cross’ from God. The match has been won. There’s something in the final score line that elicits a smile from you. It reads –‘ONE LOVE’. [1-0].

In the post match awards function (venue: heaven), you are fired a query -“How could you ever conceive a goal so beautiful? Did anyone else have a hand in it?” You don’t succumb to the trap. You smile, turn right to God, raise God’s hand and gently whisper -“I did nothing. It was the hand of God.” God smiles, turns to you and declares -

“Little one, you have won the cup of life.”

You are perplexed. There seems to be no trophy or cup anywhere in sight. The Lord sports an understanding chuckle and with sympathetic sweetness says-

“Little one, here I am. All yours.”

The realization dawns on you- THE LORD IS THE CUP OF LIFE. The Lord hugs you and you wonder to yourself- “Have I won the Cup of life or has the Cup of life won over me?” Your tears flow freely, an unambiguous acknowledgement of eternity.

PS: Let the Lord be the ‘goal’ of your life, the ‘keeper’ of your fortunes and the ‘captain’ of your game. Then the Cup of life will be yours, for sure.

Dear reader, did you like this soccer? Would you like more of such articles from Swami’s students? Please let us know at h2h@radiosai.org. Thank you for your time. See you again next week.

Jai Sai Ram. H2H Team.