I have just returned from this year’s 6-day visit with my family in the US. All our visits were very sweet, by Maharaj’s grace, so it was very hard to leave them. After my husband left me at our daughter’s house on my way back to India, I stayed outside for a while trying to compose myself. “This is really hard,” I said to Maharaj. “Please help me to be strong.” The answer came at once: “You are going to battle.” Startled into attention, I quickly said my good-byes and left for India. I had never thought of our work in that way, but that was just what I needed—a strong reminder of why I have left those so dear to me in America to work in Maharaj’s mission. It is a battle against the darkness that is so pervasive at this time in the world. Our weapons are only the Love and Wisdom and Power of God.

            An example is here before us today: A Hindu family has come to do Jaap Sahib in havan and to sponsor Akhand Paath (reading of the full Guru Granth Sahib, followed by a special langar). Their son Amit had been kidnapped as he left college and held for ransom. For 70 days he  was kept in utter isolation—his hands and legs and neck in chains, blindfold over his eyes, and ear stoppers in his ears, and often drugged, so that he would have no idea where he was or who  his captors were.

            His family had come to Maharaj for help. He told them to do Jaap Sahib with full faith in God. After some time, he said, their son would be returned, they would not have to pay a single rupee of the huge ransom being demanded, and the kidnappers would be nabbed and finished. And so it was. When the kidnappers came to an agreed location to meet the family and show them Amit to prove that they had him and that he was alive, the police fired a few shots to scare them into releasing the boy. Amazingly, they did so and fled after firing back a few shots. The police were under orders not to shoot them lest they kill Amit. Then in the next few days, two of the kidnappers, including the kingpin, were shot dead and several more were arrested.

            Punit, older brother of Amit, says that he credits the miraculous return of Amit—just as Maharaj had predicted—to Maharaj Ji’s word, Jaap Sahib (which his father always kept in his pocket and read continually), and the God-fearing nature of his paternal grandfather. Punit says that more than ever he is now convinced that all religions are one.