“Trust in the Lord,
and do good; Dwell in the land, and feed on His faithfulness. Delight yourself also in the Lord, And He shall give you the desires
of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord, Trust also in Him, And He shall
bring it to pass.” (Psalm
37:3-5; New King James Bible Version (NKJV). “The Lord has appeared of old to me, saying: “Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love; Therefore with lovingkindness I have drawn you.” (Jeremiah 31:3; NKJV). Here we are again, at the beginning of a new year,
promising new habits and maybe ending a few old ones. Each new year allows us to take this mental
pause and start things over, often-times in a more productive way, if we’re
smart. Even if we’re not smart,
beginnings and endings always change things in this human experience. So, most of us welcome the prospect of second
chances to get a few things right. With
the new year, a page naturally turns in our lives, hopefully leaving much of the
bad behind. Christmas
time parties and festivities precede the celebration of a new year, and in the
midst of it all, we soak up the seasonal music as songs bring back some good
memories of the past. Even while walking
through the shopping centers and stores we can hear people humming a tune while
doing their shopping. This year the old song,
“Scarlet Ribbons” has been coming to my thought, a lot. It has always been one of my favorites. For anyone not familiar with it, this song is
about a father who wants to find scarlet ribbons for his young daughter, who
has prayed for them. Trying to fulfill
her wishful prayer one night, the father searches their town all night long, trying
to find the scarlet ribbons for her; but to no avail. Sadly he returns home empty handed and checks
in on his sleeping daughter. To his
shock and amazement, he finds scarlet ribbons lying, mysteriously, on her
bed. In the last line of the song, the
father says, “If I live to be a hundred,
I will never know from where, came those lovely scarlet ribbons, scarlet
ribbons for her hair.” This song kept running through my head as I was Christmas shopping this year. I couldn’t seem to turn it off. It made me thnk of my three young grand-daughters, all who wear ribbons in their hair. Two of the girls are in grade school, and one was in high school; but I had never seen any of them wearing a scarlet ribbon. Pondering this, I thought that maybe scarlet ribbons might make good stocking-stuffer gifts for them. The oldest girl was on her school’s Pom-Pom squad and wore ribbons to every sports event. She, at least, might actually need scarlet ones. So, like that father in the song, I began the search. It was like a symbolic
quest for me, but I thought it would be an easy task; for in today’s
marketplace, there were probably thousands of them out there. After a couple of weeks of searching,
however, I ran into that proverbial brick wall.
I found every other color in the rainbow, but no scarlet ribbons were in
any stores I visited. Yet, having come to the
end of my search, I decided not to give up, entirely. Instead, I prayed about it, just like the
girl in the song. I felt peaceful doing
so, because it came to my thought to realize that, although I had no idea where
these ribbons might exist, God was omnipresent and absolutely did know! I then let go of the whole situation and even
forgot about the ribbons for awhile. Some days later, the
thought came to me to go back to a certain store I had already visited, in
order to look at some soft travel bags for two of my friends, who did a lot of
traveling. I did so, and while examining
the different bags, a flash of scarlet caught my eye. When I moved the other bags out of the way, I
found two sets of travel bags, hidden behind the others, and all were bound
with beautiful, wide, scarlet ribbons.
They were exactly the kind my grand-daughters could wear in their
various hair-dos. The ribbons were
loosely tied around the bags, simply to hold the small bags together; so I
bought the two sets of bags for my friends, and when I arrived home, I removed the
ribbons that were wrapped around the travel sets. There were eight ribbons in all…two for each
of the girls, and two left over in case anyone lost one. I had actually been led to the store with the
ribbons. Finding these ribbons filled me with awe. I knew that it was not a coincidence. I had never intended to go back to that store. And the poor man in the song might ‘never know from where’ his daughter’s scarlet ribbons came; but we can all know, in today’s world, where all of our good comes from…straight from the spiritual Source of all that exists. Nothing is lost, or hidden, to God; therefore, nothing need be lost or hidden from any one of us who turns to infinite Spirit, God, for any good thing we humbly desire or need. I then saw that the mystery of the song was solved.
The man in the song failed in his own search because he tried to find
the scarlet ribbons, all by himself, when God had them, in sight, all along. The man’s physical vision wasn’t omnipresent;
God’s vision is. But more to the point,
there is no need to search ‘out there’ in the outer world of finite form, when
we are connected to our God-Source through our Christ Consciousness (innate,
spiritual consciousness within). To
search by ourselves, without our ever-present oneness with God, is so often
just an exercise in futility. It just
brings us to our finite limitations. But
since we already have all the good we need within our God connection and ever-present
love for each of us, we’re not left to ourselves to do, or be, anything. God is always invisibly present within and
without us to ‘find’ what seems to be missing to our perception and point our
way to it, in this human condition. And
if all human ways and means fail because we aren’t perceiving, or obeying, the
divine direction coming from within, then the divine Consciousness does it
without us, or through someone else. I don’t know if my
grand-daughters will even appreciate or wear the scarlet ribbons. I think the gift was really for me: I had to mentally learn and realize that we
are connected to our God-Source, despite all physical appearances to the
contrary. Since, “we live and move and have our being,” in that
infinite, consciousness or Mind of the Almighty, nothing is ever, really, lost
to us. We cannot get out of the Mind of
God. (See Acts
17:28; NKJV). We are mentally connected to our God-source at
all times, despite all physical appearances of things. When we do not perceive
God’s invisible presence with us, we accept all the wants and woes of this
material scene before our eyes. We
believe ourselves to be disconnected, or cast away from our Source and Origin
of being. We feel alone and abandoned when
material needs press us. Yet, there is a pathway
back to our ‘Father’s house’. Our oneness with God opens that path when we
turn from the material scene (physical sense of being) and return to our
spiritual sense of being as God’s own off-spring. This mental shift from the world ‘out there’
to our inner, spiritual knowledge, shines the light on our true pathway back to our divine Source
and Origin, as we let go of our material fears and false perception of being. Christ Jesus once told
his followers a great truth that almost the whole world still ignores today: He said, “Go
thy way; and as thou hast believed, so be it done unto you.” (Matthew 8:13; King
James Bible; KJV). In this declaration,
the Master healer was showing us the power of belief in God’s loving
sovereignty that is at hand for everyone.
Belief in God’s invisible kingdom with us, and the spiritual
laws that govern God’s kingdom, turn the physical scene back from discord to
harmony. When fully trusting (believing)
in God’s love and deliverance, what seems lost is refound; whoever is sick or
broken becomes whole again; war becomes peace; and whatever good seems to be
materially absent, springs forth into physical form again. This is what Christ Jesus’ healing ministry
was all about: replacing the discordant,
material beliefs that become manifested into physical form in this human
experience, with the truth and realization of our spiritual being, with its
undying connection to our spiritual God-Source.
Slowly but surely, we
learn that we do not have to correct God’s perfectly harmonious spiritual
creation, of which we are a part. The
heavenly kingdom of God is forever harmonious; that’s how it can be
ever-lasting. What we DO have to do, is believe in our own God connection. Our own belief is absolutely necessary;
because what we hold to be true in our own consciousness tells us to be sick or
well, abundant or poor, peaceful or under siege. We are the captains of our own ships, so to
speak; but we must pursue and find the spiritual truths of being, before our
own thoughts can turn our human life experiences around from bad to good,
discord to harmony. This process doesn’t
happen in just a day. But as we
gradually turn to God more and more with our daily lives, a transition begins
to take place, bringing forth more and more blessings from whatever new
spiritual enlightenment we have embraced. People around the globe
have experienced deliverances from all types and categories of earthly evils by
the simple turn in thought from the
false sense of material reality to the truth of spiritual reality and our
forever, harmonious safety in God’s loving, invisibly present, spiritual
creation. We must open our spiritual eyes
and realize that (in this human experience) we are the masters of our own fate
because we are given a choice as to what we believe. We are always free to believe, and trust,
whatever we individually choose to believe and trust. And although God, Infinite Spirit, is
omnipotent (the only power) over us, when we allow beliefs in other powers to take
control of us, we cannot avoid suffering from such beliefs. The Bible tells us that
if we do good, God will give us the desires of our heart. (See 1st quote at top of
article). Our infinite Creator of all
good and useful things does not withhold any good things from Its children,
when asked. But when we trust and
believe in worldly pursuits and seeming powers, rather than God’s spiritual
laws and power, it is our beliefs in
other powers that produce the destructive effects we believe in and
manifest…not any real power in materiality or material law. |
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