Puja means- ekagrata (concentration)- it also means yoga. God should be treated as a member of our family. With this attitude we should bathe and decorate him and offer that food that we are going to eat as naivedya. On the other hand treating God merely as an idol that gets angry unless a grand puja and prasad are not offered to it is wrong. We must treat God as our own family member. That’s all!

Many people have this wrong attitude that if we don’t worship our ‘kula Devata (family deity)’ she will get angry and curse us. Some others declare that a grand puja only makes us great and it is a sin to do puja on a small scale. They think that all their present day problems are because of the fact that some ancestor did not do pujas on a grand scale. All these are wrong. Due to this wrong fear, people have stopped completely praying to God. They have pushed God completely to a corner of the house, as they are afraid of the repercussions in case of a wrong puja. Why are you treating God like this? God is our family member. Just as we share our happiness and sorrows with our family, we should share them with God. We should sit near him and read Bhagavad Gita, Puranas etc. Since God is our family member, we should offer him whatever we are going to eat that day. Creating a fear in people about God and keeping them away from God is not at all good.

(Glimpses of Bhaktimala 3)