“God is known in loving kindness, God
the true, eternal good. Zion ne’er will He forsake thee;
Trust his Father Motherhood. Can a mother leave her children? Can
unchanging Love forget? Though all earthly friends betray
thee, Lo His arm enfolds thee yet. Every prayer to Him is answered,
prayer confiding in His will. Blessedness and joy are near thee,
hear His gentle Peace be still. Hear His voice above the tempest: I
have not forsaken thee. In My hand thy name is graven. I will
save both thine and thee.” (By Johannes Heermann from the Swedish Translation of Jakob
Boethius and Johan O. Wallin). Adapted Here we are, two days after Christmas
and we’re all trying to cling to the Christmas season, despite the unhappiness
that seems to be running amuck all over the world. I think this collective unhappiness has been
afoot for several years, building up to a fever pitch. But it really seems to have peaked in the USA
due to the contentious political season we’ve had this year. Still, as the famous Scarlett O’Hara of “Gone
With the Wind” fame reminds us, ‘Tomorrow
is another day.’ And aren’t we glad this is true? Every day, something new comes our way,
allowing us to leave the world of yesterdays, good or bad, for new adventures that
we never even imagined the day before.
Children are quicker to value each new day. They dive into it without looking back at
what made them unhappy yesterday. They
seem to understand the old saying, “Every
day gives us another chance.” Adults, on the other hand, seem to
cling to yesterday’s bumps in the road, refusing to look beyond them. Why should we look beyond them? Because when we look above and beyond the
negative things that block our paths today, we discover that there are still
endless new paths coming across our
conscious awareness that we’ve never even tried before. The path that we were on may never have
been the right one for us, and in letting it go, we leave ourselves open to
find our more harmonious destination. A certain uncle of mine (in his 90s
now) often speaks of the wisdom of ‘going
with the flow’. By that, he means, don’t
try to force what you want, or where
you think you belong. God’s
harmony doesn’t come to us with stress; rather, it comes with peace. No one is promised everything he or she wants, because sometimes it might be destructive for us to get what we
desire. God’s vision for our individual
good is the thing to trust; for our human sense doesn’t perceive the whole
picture in order to make the right decisions all the time. I don’t believe that anything good is
withheld from us. So, it’s wise to
remember that God knows, in advance, what we can’t yet see, for our good or for
our bad. That’s because God can see
around corners and we can’t. So, whatever contests or forms of
competitions we might enter, it’s wise to remember that not everyone wins the
contest. In fact, most competitive races
end with vastly more losers than winners.
The secret is to do one’s best, and then let it go. For if the competition is over, and we don’t let
go of it, we’ll suffer far beyond any reason to suffer. And more importantly, we’ll
miss the new blessing that is coming our way that is better than the contest we
lost. I like to remember that all God’s
children have their own. God is our
endless Source, and our eternal Parent.
If and when we trust that spiritual truth, we need not wait too
long for our human need to be met. When holding onto our trust in our Almighty,
Father/Mother God, whatever we need comes forward into our human experience. Just as human parents meet the needs of their
precious children when called upon in faith, our divine Parent meets our every
need in this human experience. When
trusting God with our human care, no good thing is withheld from God’s
spiritual off-spring. We are never forgotten.
The divine Mind that created the
spiritual universe to exist forever has left no one out. But we have to hold to this truth in order to
bring its blessing to our doors. God is
always with us, but God isn’t a fleshly Parent.
God is our spiritual Father
and Mother, who is always with us, despite the fact that we don’t see God in
any fleshly form. Yet, what is more
important to remember is that although we can’t perceive God physically, God
can perceives us spiritually.
Despite the fact that God is not a finite, fleshly being, and we don’t
see him ‘in the flesh’, God never loses sight of us. Now, many might challenge this truth,
and, therefore, dismiss God’s ever-present care when needed. But, when we challenge God by not taking that divine Hand, it’s as if
God is reaching out to us, but we’ve turned our back on the Almighty. God does not force anyone to take Its divine
help. It has to be voluntary. As some poet once wrote, “God made all Its children free. Live, itself, is liberty.” Many religions, all over this world,
have taught that faith is the key
that opens the very door of heaven; for faith is the quality that accepts
God’s divine, spiritual existence and ever-lasting sovereighty even though
one cannot touch, smell, hear, taste, or see divine Spirit in material
form. In other words, true faith expresses one’s full
acceptance of God’s invisible,
spiritual presence. Faith gives
the “go forth” sign to God that we accept Its divine help. More than two thousand years ago, Jesus
the Christ came into the human scene to bring the knowledge of our true
identities. He proclaimed that he was
the way-shower and we were to follow him.
The biblical books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John should be studied
by all who wish to understand the depth of what Jesus taught to his followers. ‘Jesus’ was his earthly name; ‘the Christ’ is
his ever-lasting, spiritual title. But
the Christ-title belongs to all of God’s children. ‘The Christ’ represents the spiritual identity of all of God’s
off-spring. Here in this earthly experience, we’ve all
had temporary, individual, human names; but ‘the Christ’signifies our
ever-lasting, spiritual identities. When we leave this material-sense realm and
awaken to our true spiritual realm, we will remember our original names, because
we will be fully awake. But for now, it
is good to know that we have never lost our loved ones to death, for the
children of Almighty God cannot die. We
leave this physical realm, but we don’t cease to be. Our consciousness leaves the frail, material
bodies behind, but no one’s spirit dies. So, all the unhappiness, wars, and
competitions that crowd our minds are completely unnecessary. They are games to excite children. Our infinite God of Spirit has enough good
for everyone, all the time. We only need
to learn one, easy thing: take the mental step of pursuing our Creator, and the
ever-present, spiritual creation that is as near to us as our own reflection in
a mirror. God sees us as the spiritual
children we really are. God’s heavenly
creation surrounds us, and there is no other place we can ever be. For, there is no such thing as a material creation. No other reality exists than God’s spiritual creation. The biblical book of Luke tells of Christ
Jesus’ answer when he was questioned about the location of God’s heaven. It’s written:
“Now when He was
asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, He answered them and
said, “The kingdom of God does not come with
observation; nor will they say,
‘See here!’ or ‘See there!’ For indeed, the kingdom of God is within you. (Luke 17:20-22; New King James Bible
(NKJV). I think this means that the
Kingdom of God, (which we call heaven) doesn’t exist in the outer world of
material form; but rather, the Kingdom of God exists within ourselves…more
precisely, the Kingdom of God is stored in our own memory banks. This means that we already possess it, we just
have to call it forward into the forefront of our thoughts, and cease searching for it in the material realm.
It’s stored in our own memories,
never found in the finite world of material form. That makes sense, when we
realizes that God, Itself, is a spiritual being, not a material one. Heaven must be a spiritual place, with no material
forms about it, at all. That’s why our
true, spiritual life can go on, for ever and ever. |
