Is it Trust in God or Faith in God?

I am a god-fearing man who believes in total surrender to the Lord. Though I am no good at established rituals I do have some of my own. After finishing my morning ablutions I start playing devotional songs from Youtube. Songs like Venkateshwara Suprabhatham, Vishnu Sahasranamam etc. While these are going on in the background for about sixty minutes I get to work on my PC.

Every morning after a bath I go to the small puja room in my home, clean up the place by getting rid of the old flowers and replacing them with new flowers. I offer a couple of bananas and a small silver cup with fresh milk as Neivedyam and light up the two small silver lamps. After that, I recite a few slokas- some from memory and some I read from a booklet. The process takes me about 30 minutes. I find the whole experience blissful.

What do I call my belief in god- Trust in God or Faith in God? I referred to Google Knowledge to find out. This is what it says.

Trust- to believe that someone is good and honest and will not harm you, or that something is safe and reliable

 Faith means putting your trust in God and having confidence that he will not fail you.

They say that God constantly tests his ardent devotees more than he tests the non-believers to

 ensure that the devotee constantly remembers him. This has been very true in my life.

 The toughest test that the Lord gave me involved my son Balaji. He was just a year old and as per family traditions, we had to get his first Mundan at Tirupati on a chosen date.

 

Accompanied by my parents, when we were on our way to Tirupati, my son developed a fever

 and severe cold which got worse that night. The next morning, when I was ready to leave for

 Kalyanakatta (common hall) and the holy pond, my father, the cautious man that he always is, was furious with me. He insisted that we cancel the whole ritual or alternatively bring the barber to the lodge and give the child a bath in hot water at the Lodgings where we were staying. I stood my ground and told my father that my prayer involved getting the shaving ceremony done at the common hall followed by the child taking a holy dip in the pond. After a heated argument when my father realized that I was not going to give in, he let go but refused to join me.

 

With fear in my heart, but with total faith in the Lord, I went through the rituals as per my plan. After dipping the feverish baby in the pond three times, I came out and quickly wiped him off and dressed him up in warm clothes. When my wife placed her hand on the baby’s forehead to see if his fever had risen, she was surprised to find there was none! In spite of going through the ordeal, Balaji was smiling at us! I felt that the Lord was smiling at me and telling me, “You have passed yet another test, young man!” Not only was the fever gone, but Balaji’s cold disappeared as quickly!  What I did may be crazy but that is what implicit faith in the Lord makes you do sometimes!

 

(I have narrated a few more such experiences in Part Three titled `My tryst with God` in my autobiography titled `Courage My Companion`)