Bhagavad Gita 4.8

paritrāṇāya sādhūnāṁ

vināśāya ca duṣkṛtām

dharma-saṁsthāpanārthāya

sambhavāmi yuge yuge

 

“To protect the righteous, to reward the just,

To shatter the wicked, reduce them to dust.

To uphold dharma and make it shine,

In every age, I descend, pure and divine.”

 

O most merciful Lord, you are the shelter of the world. When we are in trouble, we turn to you for help, but when we are in too much trouble, you come to us to help us. Such is the nature of your divine descent. My dear Lord, what you do at crucial moments in history, you are also ready to do during the traumatic moments within each human heart. In many ways, the human heart is a microcosm of the world. Just as in the world, your position is not always prominent at the manifest level—though you are always omnipotent—the same applies to the human heart.

O Lord, empower me so that I can take charge of placing you in charge of my heart. Please, O Lord, I beg you fervently—make your presence manifest within my heart and crush the many disruptive and destructive desires that have taken root. Due to such unwholesome desires, the devotional desires in my heart have weakened and feel threatened. Please, O Lord, strengthen those desires by your presence and benevolence, so that my heart can become your throne. And thereafter, I can play my part in offering this world—or at least offering one corner of this world—to you. Bless me, my Lord, so that restoring divine order in my heart makes me a useful instrument for you in restoring order in this world.

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04.08 To deliver the pious and to annihilate the miscreants, as well as to reestablish the principles of religion, I Myself appear, millennium after millennium.