Feel the presence of God in all activities

This is a short story from the life of Saint Namdev.

Saint Namdev was a great bhaktha and used to sing many abhangas on Lord Vittal. One day, Lord Siva appeared on his dream and told,
"My son Namdev, you are a great devotee yet you need to learn something."  Namdev was happy seeing Lord Siva and asked, "How can I learn it?".
Siva told, "Go to my temple near by your home and meet another bhaktha Vitoba from whom you can learn it" and then disappeared.

Namdev went to the nearby temple and enquired about  the presence of a bhaktha by name Vitoba. While he was roaming around he saw an old man sitting on the ground placing his legs on Siva lingam statue. Namdev thought how disrespectful was the old man to keep his legs on Siva lingam. The priest came there and introduced Namdev to the old man and told Namdev that the old man was Vitoba.

Namdev got puzzled over Lord Siva's statements and thought on what he could learn from an old man who was so disrespectful! Vitoba saw Namdev and told, "Namdev, great to see you. I am very old that I cannot move my limbs and legs away. Can you please move my legs to a place where there is no God".
Namdev was happy that atleast now Vitoba realized his mistake and asked for help and moved his leg away from Siva lingam. But to their surprise, a Siva lingam appeared on the place where Namdev placed Vitoba's legs and this happened whenever he moved Vitoba's legs to a new place.

Namdev, the saint, now understood his mistake. Though he was a great devotee, he did not realize the presence of God in everything and Lord Siva made him realize it through Vitoba. He also felt bad, for his demeaning thought on Vitoba.
Thereafter Saint Namdev, felt the presence of God everywhere.

In order to inculcate this mindset of perceiving and feeling the presence of God in everything, our Hinduism has certain practices in our every day life. Like considering books, music, arts, toys, tools, pencils etc as Godly forms. We have so many Gods each of them being the presiding deity for a particular activity (health, wealth, knowledge, enjoyment etc). By praying to the presiding deity of a particular activity, we implicitly feel the presence of God in that activity.

For example, before eating we can pray deity Annapurna for bestowing us that meal and ask her us to grace with strength. By slowly practicing this, we will acquire the bhavam of seeing God in every activity.
So let us start all our daily activities by praying to the presiding deity.

We have to carefully understand this story otherwise might get mislead.  By critical analysis of the story, we might say "Let me keep my legs over Lord Krishna's statue like Vitoba did!" Yes, we can but what is our intention behind that act is very important. The intention or bhavam makes the difference. If we do that act just for fun or showing being intelligent to draw similarities, then it is of outright disrespect. However, if you share the same bhavam of Vitoba, the bhavam of seeing God in all beings (yes, that include those you dislike!), then indeed you are a great bhaktha like him. And, it is for sure a Siva lingam would appear from his feet for such a great bhaktha as well!

Let us hear this abhang of Sant Namdev and seek his blessings