God Cannot Be Everywhere, That Is Why He Created Mothers | Reading

In this episode, I read the Preface to Chapter 2 from God Cannot Be Everywhere, That Is Why He Created Mothers — a chapter that captures the quiet strength, sacrifice, and unseen love that shape our lives long before we understand it.

This preface sets the tone for the entire chapter: warm, reflective, and deeply human.
If you’re a parent, a child, or someone who has ever been held together by a mother’s love, this one will speak to you.

🎧 Listen. Reflect. Share with someone who needs this today. 
📘 Scan the QR code on the cover to buy the book on Amazon.

Leadership Motivation is hosted by Bobby Sajutie, author, motivational speaker, and faith‑driven mentor. New episodes every Monday (motivational lessons) and Thursday (cinematic stories).  

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Transcript

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Good morning leaders. Today is Tuesday at 6 a.m. Right now we are at season four, episode one, and I would like to do something different. I'm gonna read from my published book, God Cannot Be Everywhere. That is why he created mothers. You can scan the barcode and purchase it online. Today I'm gonna talk from preface to chapter two. Enjoy. Preface. There are moments in life when the ground beneath us shifts. Quietly at first, then suddenly until we arrive we realize we are no longer standing where we once were. These moments do not ask for permission. They arrived unannounced, rearranging our priorities, our beliefs, and our understanding of God. This book was born out of such moments, not from comfort but from collapse, not from clarity, but from confusion, not from abundance, but from the kind of scarcity that forces you to decide what you truly believe. I did not grow up in a place where faith was a luxury. I grew up in a place where faith was oxygen, a bamboo hut beside a cemetery, a licking roof made of coconut leaves, a dirt floor covered with newspapers, a mother who stood in line for rice while being told to go back to China, a father who drifted in and out like a passing shadow, a childhood shaped by hunger, humiliation and the quiet heroism of a woman who refused to break. I did not learn faith from sermons, I learned it from survival. I learned it from watching my mother whisper prayers in the dark, believing God would provide even where the evidence said otherwise. I learned it from the nights when rain poured through the roof and she held me close, saying Besokita Haruskuat, tomorrow we must be strong. I learned it from the graves around us, where families cried and chanted prayers, teaching me that life is fragile, sacred and fleeting. I learned it from the silence of poverty where every meal was a miracle and every day was a victory. Faith was not a concept. Faith was our currency. Faith was our shelter. Faith was our inheritance. This book is not written from the mountain top. It is written from the valley, from the places where God met me long before I knew how to name his presence. It is written for anyone who has ever felt unseen, unheard, or unworthy. For anyone who has ever wondered if God still moves in the shadows, for anyone who has ever stood between what they see and what they believe, this is not a book of answers, it is a book of encounters. Encounters with grace, encounters with suffering, encounters with the God who sees us even when the world does not. If you have ever felt like your story is too bro too broken to be used by God, I pray these pages remind you of this truth. God does his past work in places the world overlooks. And sometimes the greatest miracles begin in bambo huts beside cemeteries. Why I wrote this book? I wrote this book because silence has a way of burying stories that were meant to breathe. Four years I carried my childhood like a secret, not out of shame, but out of survival. When you grow up in poverty, you learn to hide the parts of your story that makes others comfortable, uncomfortable. You learn to smile through hunger. You learn to laugh through fear. You learn to pretend you are fine even when your world is falling apart. But God does not heal what we hide, He heals what we bring into the light. I wrote this book because I realized my story was not just mine. It was a testimony of God's faithfulness in the places most people never see. I wrote it for the child who sleeps on the floor and wonders if life will ever get better. I wrote it for the mother who sacrifices everything and receives nothing in return except the hope that her children will rise. I wrote it for the father who feels lost, ashamed or absent, believing it is too late to change. I wrote it for the believer who is tired of pretending that faith is easy. I wrote it for the skeptic who wonders if God still moves in the modern world. I wrote it for the broken, the bruised, the overlooked, and the underestimated. I wrote it because I have seen God in places where people assume He is absent. I have seen Him that it in the tears of my mother. I have seen him in the graves that surrounded our heart. I have seen him in the humiliation she endured at the rice line. I have seen him in the moments when we had nothing but still survived. I wrote this book because faith is not a theory, it is a lifeline. It is not a concept, it is a compass. It is not a feeling, it is a foundation. I wrote this book because I believe stories carry power, the power to heal, to confront, to awaken, to restore. And I believe God entrusted me with this story not to keep it, but to release it. I wrote this book because someone out there is standing at the edge of their own cemetery, a place of loss, confusion, or despair. And they need to know that God can build a future from the very ground that tried to bury them. I wrote this book because faith beyond sight is not just a verse. It is a way of living, a way of breathing, a way of rising. And I wrote this book because I am living proof that God can take a child from a bamboo hut beside a cemetery and turn his story into a testimony of grace. This book is my offering, my remembrance, my gratitude, my legacy. And even if one person finds hope in these pages, then every tear, every wound, every night in that cemetery, it was all worth it. Introduction faith beyond sight. We trust what we see, the sunrise, the diagnosis, the applause. But sight is a fragile guide that is limited by distance, distorted by emotion, and often deceived by circumstance. Faith, on the other hand, is not reactive, it is intentional. It chooses to believe before the evidence appears, to walk when the path is unclear, and to build when the blueprint is divine. It challenges the very core of our human psychological values. True vision through the lens of Christian faith is much more than the ability to witness what lies before us. It is the willingness to discern God's purpose even when the circumstances seem contrary. Countless time in scripture and in our lives, the evidence we stands we see stands in stark contrast to the hope we carry within. In this very moment faith is not optional, but it is essential. To live by what we see is to cling to the temporary. To live by faith is to hold fast to the eternal promises of God. As the apostle Paul reminds us in Second Corinthians five seven, for we walk by faith, not by sight. This powerful truth calls us to trust in God's goodness, even when the way forward is shrouded in uncertainty. Faith asks us to step out when the outcome is unknown, to build when the foundation is invisible, and to wait patiently for what God has prepared, knowing that his blueprint far surpasses anything we could design. This journey of faith asks us to redefine what it means to be certain, to succeed, to persevere. It is an invitation to lead into the unseen working of God, to surrender control and to persist when the world urges retreat. Throughout these pages you will discover stories of believers who chose legacy driven vision over fleeting optimism individuals who anchored their hope in Christ and witnessed his faithfulness in unimaginable ways. Whether you are just beginning to seek, standing at the crossroads or enduring a season of waiting, you are not alone. Together through faith, we can learn to look beyond what is visible. Trust God's promises and embrace the fullness of what is possible through Him. If you have ever felt stuck between what you see and what you believe, this book is for you. Chapter one The Son of God Before I knew his name, before I ever opened a Bible, before I ever prayed a real prayer, Jesus was already in my story. Not in a church, not in a sermon, not in a miracle moment, but in the living room in Indonesia, while my mother worked as a housekeeper, and I sat alone watching Unio on a small television. Above that TV hung a cross, a simple wooden cross, silent, unexplained, unnoticed by everyone except me. I did not know what it meant. I did not know who it belonged to. I did not know why it made me feel something I could not name, but it watched me and I watched it. Onyel played on the screen, bright colors, puppets, laughter, but my eyes kept drifting upward to that cross that did not move, did not speak, did not demand anything, yet somehow felt alive. I did not understand it, I did not ask about it, I did not have the language for it, but something in me paid attention. That was the first seed. Not a religious seed, not a theological seed, a mysterious one. A symbol planted in a child's memory long before the meaning would arrive. My mother scrubbed floor in the next room, moving with the same strength that had carried her to Jakarta. Through every storm she had survived. She did not talk about God, she did not preach, she did not explain the cross, she just worked, she just endured, she just kept going. And I sat there, a small boy in a stranger's house, watching a puppet show under the shadow of a symbol I did not yet understand. Years later, I would walk behind monks in Indonesia, a German monk with piercing blue eyes, a Thai monk with a voice like calm water. I could watch them meditate, chant, walk barefoot, eat once a day, live with discipline that makes sense to me. Those moments planted more seeds, seeds of reverence, seeds of stillness, seeds of curiosity. But the first seed was the cross, silent, unexplained, unavoidable. I did not know it then, but the Son of God had already stepped into my story long before I ever stepped toward him, not with thunder, not with miracles, not with revelation, but with a quiet presence hanging above a TV while Unil played and my mother worked, and I sat there filling something I could not name. Chapter two Buddhist Values I was raised in a home shaped by Buddhist values, not just in rituals but in rhythm, the quiet reverence, the incense curling upward like prayers without words, the soft glows of candles reflecting off golden statues, the teaching of karma, compassion and detachment were woven into our daily life, not preached, but lived. Our home was filled with symbols of peace, lotus flowers, prayer beads, statues of the Buddha and the serene face of Guanin Bodhisattva, the goddess of mercy. Her expression so calm it felt like she could silence storms. I remember watching my elders bow before those statues, palms pressed together, heads lowered. There was no shouting, no emotional outbursts, just silence, stillness, a peace that felt earned through discipline. We were thought to be good not for reward, but because goodness was its own path. We were thought that suffering was inevitable but also instructive. Pain was not to be resisted but observed. You did not ask why me, you asked what can I learn. I internalized those lessons early. I learned to suppress emotion, to avoid attachment, to seek balance, to swallow my questions before they reach my lips. Desire leads to suffering, they said. So I learned to desire nothing, but beneath the surface I was a child with questions too big for silence. Why did my heart ache when I saw injustice? Why did I feel anger when someone was mistreated? Why did it bother me to my core when my father treated my mother poorly? Why did it burn inside me when he was unfair to my brother? Why did I cry four days when the stray dog I adopted died? If detachment was the goal, why did my soul long for connection? I never voiced those questions. I did not want to dishonor my family's beliefs. I respected Buddhism deeply. It taught me kindness, humility, discipline. It taught me to bow my head, quiet my mind, and steady my breath. But it did not answer the ache. It did not explain the chaos I saw in the world, especially within my own family. It did not tell me what to do with my grief. Then came may nineteen ninety eight. I was seventeen when the riots broke out in Indonesia. The streets were no longer quiet. The incense was replaced by smoke. The silence was shattered by screams. The peace I had known was pierced by panic. I had to stay overnight at the small prayer room of my high school, Dharmaputra, because I could not go home. The roads were burning, the city was collapsing, looters were everywhere. We armed ourselves with baseball bats, modified with nails hammered into the ends. Teenage boys holding weapons we did not know how to use, children pretending to be soldiers because the world had turned into battlefield overnight. We turned off all the lights so the looters would not see us. We whispered instead of speaking. We prayed instead of sleeping. I remembered calling my mother, her voice trembled. She tried to sound strong, but fear cracked through every word. She told me to stay safe, she told me she loved me. She told me not to come home. We lived in a gated neighborhood, safe, supposedly. But safety is a fragile illusion when the world is burning. Tommy was already in the United States. He had been granted asylum before because of the riots. He escaped the fire. I was still inside it. My school was three stories tall. From the rooftop we could see the city glowing orange not from sunset but from flames. A department store burned until its wall collapsed. News spread that almost eighty percent of its employees died trapped inside, screaming for help that never came. I remember feeling helpless, angry, confused. Sixteen years old, watching my country tear itself apart. I remember asking myself where is peace now? Everything I had been taught balance, detachment, karma felt too distant, too quiet, too small. I did not want to observe suffering, I wanted to stop it. I did not want to transcend paint. I wanted to screen, I did not want to detach, I wanted justice. I saw families destroyed, businesses burned, innocent people harmed and killed, women assaulted, children orphaned, men beaten in the streets. I could not make sense any of it. I remember walking past a temple that had been vandalized, spray painted across the wall were the words Ini Tampatibu. This place is for indigenous. The statue of the Buddha was cracked, the incense pot overturned, the fruits of for offering stolen. The sacred space was violated. Something inside me cracked too. I did not want to be calm. I did not want to be silent, I did not want to detach. I wanted answers, I wanted justice, wanted a God who could speak, a God who could act, a God who could step into the fire and say enough. The riot did not just shake my country, it shook the very core of my soul, it shattered the quiet world I grew up in. It exposed the limits of the peace I had been taught. It forced me to confront the questions I had buried for years. I began to question everything, not out of rebellion, but out of desperation. I needed something more than silence, more than balance, more than detachment. I needed a God who saw, a God who heard, a God who cared, a God who could hold the weight of my anger, my grief, my confusion, my longing. I did not know where to look. I did not know what I was searching for. I only knew one thing. I could not stay in silence anymore. Thank you for listening. Tomorrow we will start chapter three. God cannot be everywhere. That is why He created fathers. I'll see you next time. So long.