I'm sick and in pain and it's wearing down my faith — where is God in this?
The diseased run to the physician for their own good — running to God is the same instinct.
Pain has a way of shrinking the world down to itself. When the body hurts day after day, prayer goes flat, the practices that once felt alive feel like going through the motions, and a quiet, bitter question starts up underneath everything: if there is a God, where is he in this? You are not failing at faith by asking it. Tukaram never pretends illness is small or that a sick person should simply be cheerful about it.
What he does is refuse to let the suffering become an argument against turning toward God. His sharpest image is exactly the one you already live by without thinking: vyādhi piḍilā dhāmve vaidyāchiyā gharā — "the disease-stricken runs to the physician's house." Nobody has to coax a sick person to seek relief; the hurt itself does the driving. Running to God in pain, he says, is that same instinct — not a betrayal of faith but its most honest form. And he is bold enough to turn your suffering into a claim on God: a devotee left to rot in sickness is a poor reflection on the Lord he trusts, and Tukaram is not above saying so to God's face.
He also reframes what the pain might be doing. Sometimes affliction is nimba — neem, the bitter medicine given to cure a disease deeper than the visible one. Sometimes the worn-down, flattened feeling is not faith dying but hope loosening its grip, which has its own strange peace. And when even that is too much, his counsel is the plainest thing of all: put one small living practice back in, and let it start to wake the body again.
Abhang 2370 — Running to the physician is already faith
मुंगीचिया घरा कोण जाय मूळ । देखोनियां गूळ धांव घाली ॥१॥ व्याधी पिडिला धांवे वैद्याचिया घरा । दुःखाच्या परिहारा आपुलिया ॥३॥
No one invites the ant — it sees the jaggery (guḷa) and runs to it on its own; the hungry one is not called by food but goes seeking it; and vyādhi piḍilā dhāmve vaidyāchiyā gharā — "the disease-stricken runs to the physician's house," for his own relief. This is Tukaram's answer to "where is God in my pain": the very ache that makes you cry out is the instinct that carries you to God, exactly as illness carries you to the doctor. You do not have to manufacture faith you no longer feel — the pain itself is doing the seeking, and that running-toward is the whole of devotion.
Abhang 2428 — Make your sickness God's problem too
विष्णुदासां भोग । जरी आम्हां पीडी रोग ॥१॥ तरि हें दिसे लाजिरवाणें । काय तुम्हांसी सांगणें ॥ध्रु.॥
Here Tukaram does something startlingly bold with suffering: jarī āmhām pīḍī rōga — tari hē disē lājiravāṇē — "if disease afflicts us, this looks shameful — what is there to tell you?" A servant of the Lord left to suffer reflects badly on the Lord himself, and Tukaram says so plainly, as a kind of complaint pressed right up against God. When your illness makes you feel abandoned, this abhang gives you permission to take that feeling to God rather than away from him — to argue, to lean on the relationship, to make your pain his concern. That arguing is not the loss of faith; it is faith refusing to let go.
Abhang 131 — When the cure tastes bitter
निंब दिला रोग तुटाया अंतरीं । पोभाळितां वरि आंत चरे ॥२॥ तुका म्हणे हित देखण्यासि कळे । पडती आंधळे कूपा माजी ॥३॥
Nimba dilā roga tuṭāyā antarī — "the neem (bitter medicine) was given to break the disease within." Tukaram's principle is that what truly heals often tastes bitter, and that coddling a real condition only lets the worm eat from inside. This does not mean your illness is a punishment — but it lets you ask whether the hard thing you are enduring might be working on a disease deeper than the body's, the way a sharp truth heals where comfort would have let things rot. Hita dekhaṇyāsi kaḷe — "the seeing-eyed know what is beneficial." When pain is wearing you down, this abhang asks you to look for the medicine inside the bitterness rather than only at the bitterness.
Abhang 47 — The flatness might be peace, not the end of faith
गेले मानामान । सुखदुःखाचें खंडन ॥४॥ तुका म्हणे चित्तीं । नाहीं वागवीत खंती ॥५॥
When pain grinds on, the categories that used to organize life can go dim — good day and bad day blur, and you fear your faith has simply gone numb. Tukaram names a state that looks exactly like that from the outside but is its opposite: once you stop clutching at āsh (the hope that life must go your way), gele mānāmān, sukhduḥkhāche khaṇḍan — "honor and dishonor are gone, joy and sorrow are cancelled out." His one diagnostic is in the body: nāhī vāgavīt khantī — "no sorrow is being carried." If the flatness comes weighted with grief, it is something else and needs care; if it comes with the weight lifted, it may be the quiet that arrives once you loosen your grip on a body you cannot control.
Abhang 59 — Put one living practice back in
विठोबाचें नाम नुच्चारी जें तोंड । प्रत्यक्ष तें कुंड रजकाचें ॥४॥ तुका म्हणे त्याचे काष्ठ हातपाय । कीर्तना नव जाय हरीचिया ॥५॥
This is Tukaram in his harshest register, naming what makes a life feel alive: small daily practices — a vow kept, the Name on the mouth, feet that go to kīrtan (communal song). Without any of them, he says bluntly, the hands and feet are kāṣṭha — wood. When illness has stripped your days down and faith feels dead, the cure he points to is not more introspection but action: re-add one small practice, even just one, and let it start to wake the body. Viṭhobāche nāma — even the Name said aloud — is enough to begin. The point for a worn-down sufferer is mercy disguised as bluntness: you do not have to feel faith to begin doing the one small thing that revives it.
In one breath
Your pain is not evidence that God has left — it is the very instinct that runs you toward him, the way sickness runs you to the physician. Take the suffering to God as a claim on him, look for the medicine hidden inside the bitterness, and when faith feels dead, put back one small living practice and let it wake you. Where is God in this? In the running itself.