Shri Nathji told the story of a thirsty bird without wings that prayed to God, asking for water. The area was mountainous. The bird sat atop a hill. Suddenly there was a flood in the plains; the waters submerged everything in sight and rose and rose till they had reached the top of the hill on which the bird sat. The bird dipped its beak into the waters and took in a few drops, satiating its thirst. All that devastation–to satiate the thirst of a little bird!
The question was barely posed before God, when another equally dramatic event was allowed to occur. An old vulture, hungry for food, searched the earth and the skies for food. It prayed to God. And God directed it to the bird below! The vulture swooped down and swallowed the bird that had just begun to relax after satiating its thirst!
The saints and sages who had witnessed the event were shaken. They put the question to God, and the voice of God rang out: “You have no right to question my Will!”
What appeared disharmonious to human intelligence had some innate significance that only the Divine Will could understand.
Shri Nathji summed it all in the famous Biblical quotation of Christ:
Thy will be done!
God is like a father, and man is like a child. God walks with man during the initial stages of his spiritual development, and later makes man walk with Him. This is like the father who walks slowly with the child, when the child is too young to walk, and later makes the child run with him when the child has grown up.