Give us this day our daily Bread of Life

"Give us this day our daily bread."
Give us grace for today; feed the famished affections.

If you think, in this verse, that Jesus is just talking about getting your "3 square meals a day," you're not thinking - or praying - deeply enough.

Remember when Jesus fed the 5000? A miracle of "daily bread," yes. But what did Jesus say to that crowd when they came searching for him the next day?

"Jesus answered them and said, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Ye seek me, not because ye saw the miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves, and were filled. Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of man shall give unto you: for him hath God the Father sealed."

He rebuked the crowd for simply looking to fill their stomaches again (and for free) because they were missing the much greater lesson:

• God is actually always present to feed every need, solve every problem, cure every ill, redeem every sin, raise every deadened life to purpose and fulfillment.

So we too need to wake up and listen to this rebuke!

This verse of Jesus' Prayer is talking about so much more than just asking God to meet our daily human needs. Jesus is asking us to understand that the real "daily bread" we should be praying to receive is the Bread of Life, the Christ!

"And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst."

Humanity focuses on material food. Jesus challenges us to focus on our spiritual food. He knew that "Divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need." And though it may appear as bread and fish, it is the profound reality behind that which is vital to "eat." And it is a huge spiritual truth:

• When the Bread of Life - the Christ - comes to your conciousness, it will feed your heart, your soul, your thought with the ideas, intuitions, inspirations that you specifically and individually need to live and prosper.

Do you get this? Do you grasp that this daily Bread of Life is what makes you alive? that makes your life worth living? that inspires you to live and give and grow into what God is making you?

This Bread of Life is so much more than something you'd eat for lunch. It is your literal companioning with God, your individual communion with God, your at-one-ment with God, your "taste" of God, your actual experience of God!

And this True Bread feeds your need with an awakening! An awakening to understand that your life is His - Spirit's - likeness! That, as far as God is concerned, you are already complete, that the True Bread is already present with you, already feeding and nourishing you, abundantly satisfying you with the Love of God, with your individual experience of Him, with your spiritual sense awakening to what Divine Love has already prepared for you: fulfillment, completeness, satisfaction.

This True Bread is the Christ, Emmanuel, God-with-us. And God's Love for you is always made manifest in practical ways. But it is the cause - the Christ - that we must seek first, not the effect - the loaves and fishes.

And the cause is the Bread of Life, the Christ, Truth, our Redeemer.

"Give us this day our daily bread."
Yes! give us grace - the unconditional love of God - today! feed all famished affections - and we know Your Grace will also feed all the stomachs that go with them.

God leads us NOT into tempation

"And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil."
And God leadeth us not into temptation but delivereth us from sin, disease, and death.

What a relief it is to know that God does not lead us into temptation, but just the opposite: He delivers us from evil - all evil! - including all sin, all disease, and even death.

What a relief it is to know that God does not dangle goodness - anything that is desirable - out in front of you just to cruelly snatch it way. God does not sucker you into wrong choices. He does not "wire" you to want what's bad for you, or make your heart's desire a sin, a sickness, or (especially) a death of your true nature.

"God is Light and in Him is no darkness at all." God has no dark intentions, no dark conflicted will for you, no dark malice, no dark humor laughing at your efforts to live and love. In Him is no darkness at all.

Yes. "God is Love." And as your Father-Mother, He creates in you a clean heart, a complete heart, a heart that beats steadily and constantly for Him. You are not cursed. You are not created as something dispicable, unworthy of love, undeserving of life, incapable of truth! God makes you in His own image and likeness, as His own reflection. The spiritual qualities you embody are reflections of Him. And He adds no sorrow with it.

Therefore, you have the divine right to reject any thought you might have of yourself as worthlessness. You have the divine right to reject every single suggestion of self-hate. God makes you to be His likeness, to live His Love, to love His Life, to be His Truth made manifest, to run with His Spirit, to live - not die! neither by age nor by 1000 cuts nor by suicide.

Wake up to see that self-love and self-hate are just positive and negative forms of egotism. It is not you. It is just a subtle suggestion that you are somehow separated from God. This "separateness" is easy to accept if you're not alert to it. It can feel good (the personal ego loves to be fed attention) but don't be duped! Egotism would love to control you, derail your life, silence your gifts, terminate your natural joy, destroy you. Don't let it! See egotism for what it is: always just a suggestion being presented to your thought. Refuse to accept it! It is your divine right to reject it! And instead, embrace your true status as God's image and likeness, a unique expression of His being. In fact you could say, you are God-being.

So don't hide under a bushel. Shine! Be the light of Light! This is your divine right and nothing can stop what God is making you to be.

"Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven."
Enable us to know, as in heaven, so on earth, God is omnipotent, supreme.

God enables you to know your perfect being, and He enables you to see it and be it.

Amen!

Hymn of Joy

You are God's song.

He sings you with joy
He sweeps your heart-strings
And tunes your voice
And makes you a hymn of miracles!

You are God's song.
He is singing you.

Listen!

Your rhythms are vibrant,
Your harmonies deep,
Your melody bright.

You are God's song.

Listen!

He is singing you
with such love

And His performance
of you

is flawless.

------------

This came to me when I was praying the Lord's Prayer last night. It was unexpected, but just what I needed to know. I hope it blesses you also.

Thinking about forgiveness (Part 2)

"Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors."
And Love is reflected in love.

Accept the forgiveness of God by living it out, by living the unconditional love of Love.

And God's love is unconditional. Jesus said it most beautifully: "He [God] causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous." God's Love shines on everyone, rains down on everyone - equally.

What matters is your response.

Are you willing to love like that? That's how God loves. And He made you in His image and likeness. He made you to be like Him. So it isn't too much of a stretch to think that loving unconditionally is actually your native way of loving.

So be who you really are! Be His loving likeness! And you will awake from the need of forgiveness because you'll be too busy loving like God does: unconditionally.

And rest assured: Love does not ignore evil. It annihilates it. It rips off the mask of egos, of separation, of many (evil) minds, and exposes these as the dream that they really are. Evil is never the reality - but it takes focus and practice to prove this.

Fortunately Jesus left us his supreme example. He repeatedly proved evil's powerlessness. And his resurrection and ascension exposed evil forever as "the liar" that it is.

So if you're feeling the need of forgiveness (and who doesn't!) or of being forgiving (ditto!), wake up to your opportunity to reflect the unconditional love of Love, God! Don't wallow around in hurts and debts and tresspasses! Don't stay asleep in that sometimes way-too-cozy dream of evil! Wake up to God and reflect Him! Let His utterly complete and unconditional joyous love pour into you, cleansing all that guilt away. And let His utterly complete and unconditional love pour right through you, and out to everyone around you, shining His light, His love equally to all.

His Love is always shining, and you are always at the point of opportunity to awake to your real status as His image and likeness. Jesus proved this so you could live this, so you could know God's complete unconditional forgiveness of you - awake - as His perfect reflection.

"Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors." And His Love is always reflected in your-being-Love-made-manifest. Here. Now.

Thinking about forgiveness (Part 1)

"Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors."
And Love is reflected in love.

You are forgiven as you forgive.

Forgiveness happens for you at the moment you forgive another. And you are forgiven in the exact same manner as you forgive another.

So don't wait! Forgive now. And don't be stingy! Forgive generously, completely, whole-heartedly, honestly.

And then be ready. Divine Love will be reflected in love. Your love, your forgiveness of another, will be Divine Love itself moving through you, reflected by you, as you.

You will be forgiven as you forgive. This is Divine Love being reflected in you-as-love-made-manifest.

And Divine Love - made manifest - is the greatest healing force there is in the entire universe.

Prayer, spiritual sense, and being childlike

"Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven."
Enable us to know, as in heaven, so on earth, God is omnipotent, supreme.

"And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them, And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven."

"Spiritual sense, contradicting the material senses, involves intuition, hope, faith, understanding, fruition, reality."

What a beautiful thing spiritual sense is! And how important it is as a way to understand how to pray.

But sometimes we forget to get past the intuitions of good that come to us. We don't notice them enough. We don't acknowledge their value and power. We don't move to the next step: HOPE! EXPECTANCY!

Notice how children - when they know something good is coming - absolutely clamor with expectancy! Their joy is contagious. They pester you non-stop until they have what you've promised them.

Isn't this exactly how we should pray to our Father-Mother God? with that intense expectancy of good coming our way?

And notice too how a child will treasure a hoped-for gift. Once it's received, they'll take it with them everywhere, telling everyone about it, showing it to their friends. They might even sleep with it!

Do you do that with your prayer? Do you so joyfully receive that inspiration that you wrap yourself up with it and joyfully take it with you everywhere you go? even sleep with it?

If so, then you're exercising your childlike spiritual sense. And that leads you to understanding - reason as well as revelation. Then can fruition - results! - be far behind?

Hasn't your child-like joy lifted you a little higher where you see the clouds "melting into such thinness" that you begin to see that God has always been with you, always there caring for you, always bringing you the intution, the thought, that you need to take the next sure step?

And with your hand in God's, like a child walking safely with his parent, you see His reality is always already present. Right where you are. Whole, healthy, holy. Just like God made you. His image and likeness. His loved child.

Approaching spiritual sense with that childlike expectancy and faithfulness makes your desires, your prayers, agents of awakening.

"Desire is prayer. And no loss can occur from trusting God with our desires that they may be moulded and exalted before they take form in words and in deeds."

Desire is prayer - a prayer that awakens you to the answer already here and now in fulfillment: God's will is already done in you, as you, for you, in completeness, in Life, Truth, and Love.

May your childlike heart receive this gift with joy - and act on it! And even sleep with it!

Desire is prayer

"Give us this day our daily bread."
Give us grace for today; feed the famished affections.

Mrs. Eddy makes this remarkable - and radical - observation at the beginning of her book "Science & Health, with Key to the Scriptures":

"Thoughts unspoken are not unknown to the divine Mind. Desire is prayer; and no loss can occur from trusting God with our desires, that they may be moulded and exalted before they take form in words and in deeds."

Desire is prayer? Really?

Yes, if you really think about it, desire is probably the most perfect and honest form of prayer.

And Mrs. Eddy doesn't stipulate that your desire has to be good, bad or indifferent. What matters is where that desire, that "prayer," is directed!

What's interesting about real desire is, it isn't fake. We all know we've prayed because we're supposed to or because it's expected or because we're scared not to or because we want to look good. But that's just talk. That's not prayer.

Desire is prayer. Desire is urgent and insistent and often wordless and even more often unspoken. It is rarely - if ever - fake. It comes from somewhere deeper than human will. I comes from somewhere more honest than human speech. It comes from somewhere deep within.

But how many times have you felt you could actually trust your genuine burning desires over to God? Don't we more often want to hide our desires from God because we don't think they're good enough or right enough or even honorable enough?

But what if you did start trusting your desires over to God? What if you knew He not only wanted you to trust Him with them, but that He would actually mold them into something beautiful for you and exalt them beyond your expectations - before they take form in word or deed?

But this is exactly what Mrs. Eddy is alerting us all to do: to trust your true desires to God. And to know that He will mold your desires and exalt them into something beautiful and real and spiritually good - into something He would really want for you, His precious child.

You could really then say that the "desire" you feel is actually the birth-pang of Reality - of God's insistant making of you into His likeness. That honest yearning from deep within you, wordless maybe, certainly strong and urgent - is telling you something fundamental about what God wants you to awake to.

Could your desire then actually be God's perfect will for you - maybe viewed "through a glass, darkly" - clamouring to be born in you, as you? to be recognized by you, as you? all glorious within / without, whole, healthy, holy? abundant, complete, fulfilled, awakening to what is already true? to what is already you as God's image and likeness?

Accept the awakening that your genuine desires entail. Accept your desires honestly, maybe even wordlessly just feel them. And then lift them up to God. Trust them to Him. Offer up all of your desires to Him. And through this honest real prayer of yours you will see your desires molded and exalted to be exactly like what God has already prepared especially for you. Accept this! and trust no subsitutes!

His daily Bread of Life will feed all your desires fully as you trust them to Him.

So recieve His grace for today. Let it calm any anxiety you have about your desires. Let His Love instruct you and free you. His Love feeds all hungering desires, all famished affections.

If you always think what you've always thought, you always get what you've always got!

"Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven."
Enable us to know, as in heaven, so on earth, God is omnipotent, supreme.

Did you ever stop to think that God enables you to know how to live a heavenly - God-filled - life right here on earth?

So how about you start accepting this? How about you change your thinking? your attitude? even your "bad"-itude?

It's time to change it up!

Cuz, like the old saying goes, if you always think what you've always thought, you're always gonna get what you've always got!

So how do you start?

By being grateful.

Grateful for what?

Look around you. Even if you are in the most dire circumstances, there is always something you can be grateful for - even if it is your own sense of humor!

And the more you look the more you'll see and the more you see the more you'll be... grateful.

And then notice this: when you're grateful, you shift your perspective. You change your thinking. You start to wake up maybe even to possibility.

This is how you get past "getting what you've always got."

Gratitude wakes you up. It changes how you think about your life right now. It enables you to know - to recognize - that God, good, is already present in your life. You start to notice goodness all around you. This is "magnifying" the Lord's blessings by being aware of them and grateful for them. You really start to see God's goodness everywhere.

Now the "hard" part of gratitude:

Act on it.

Yep, you got to put that gratitude into action.

Find that gratitude and act on it!

Let divine Love, be God in your thought first and then in your life. Let the Love of God be what you focus on, what you look for, what you live for.

And choose to refuse whatever thoughts come to you that are unhappy, depressing, demoralizing, mean, selfish, habitual - all thoughts that are unlike God. Why? because it is your divine right to listen to what is most like God, to what is good and true.

This is not hiding from reality. This is embracing God's reality. It is letting go of having only a human perspective, and opening up to the divine perspective. This is also "magnifying the Lord" - making what is true about God BIG in your thought!

The old hymn says:

"He knows the angels [spiritual thoughts] that you need, and sends them to your side, to comfort, guard, and guide."

As it says in Isaiah (30:21):

"Your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying,

'This is the way, walk in it,'
Whenever you turn to the right hand
Or whenever you turn to the left."


God enables us to know - to listen for these angel thoughts, these uplifting naturally spiritual intuitions that tell us all about our inate goodness and peace and joy and power - about our likeness, our closeness to God. And when we listen to God, He gives us the natural spiritual intuition to guide us into beautiful new ways of thinking and living, into hope and faith and understanding.

We change our thought to be more like His.

And God awakens our life.

Thy will be done in earth - in our thought - as it is in heaven - as it is in Divine Mind.

God enables us to know, as it is in heaven - in His reality - so right here where we are on earth, Divine Mind is the only power; He is supreme.

Take out the garbage!

"Give us this day our daily bread."
Give us grace for today; feed the famished affections.

Every day - in fact, every moment - God is offering you your daily communion with Him, with the Christ, the Bread of Life, Truth, and Love. This is the Grace that feeds all those famished affections: the unfulfilled yearnings, the misguided expectations, the dashed hopes; all the loneliness, self-loathing, egotism; all the versions of "you" that don't look like God.

So take out the garbage!

You have the right to dump all the negative ego stories, the nightmare histories, the scarred past, the horrible present, or a dreaded of the future.

Maybe you might have a dream at night that you are one thing or another, rich, poor, healthy, hurt, fat, thin, lonely, friendly, saint, sinner. But whatever it is, it's a dream. When you wake up, the dream - and the dreamer - are gone, and you - who you really are - are "back."

And so it is as we awake to God.

And God is all about being awake. He stirs us to be awake to what He is knowing, to be what He is doing, to see that you really are right here and now His image and likeness: purposeful, safe, secure, abundantly cared for, powerful, whole, healthy, holy.

Notice this. See what qualities of thought - your daily bread - that God is shining in you, as you. Live on this Bread of Life. Embody it by living these qualities out loud, and you'll be waking up in His kingdom.

And you may just find yourself with enough Bread to help feed the famished affections, not only of yourself, but of all those around you.

And that will be Grace for today.

Connections

If we hallow - honor, adore - God's Name, if we truly understand His nature to be completely good, we begin to awake to and accept our role as His reflection. We experience oneness with Him, communion with Him. His Name of Grace becomes our daily Bread of Life.

Then we begin to yearn for His sovereignty, His presence, to be with us, to be within us. We yearn to be with Him, to live within His kingdom, under His authority, all the time. We glimpse our likeness to Him. We yearn to reflect His unconditional Love in us as love for His creation, as love for one another. This yearning leads to doing, to forgiving all our debtors as His love forgives ours.

Then we begin to live His Love more consciously. We see the impact it has. We feel His power being made manifest in us, as us. This awakens discernment: we taste honey and understand what's good. Then we can more easily shun the bad. Learning these lessons, how then can we be led into temptation? Knowing His Love - and living it - we are delivered from all evil, from sin, disease, and even death.

How? because He really is our Father-Mother God, all-harmonious. And His is the presence (the Kingdom), and the Christly omnipotence (the Power), and the perfect Love (the Glory), forever.

Amen.

Living "Thy will be done"

"Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven."
Enable us to know, as in heaven, so on earth, God is omnipotent, supreme.

Last Sunday evening I was getting ready for bed, and dreading Monday morning, having to go back to a stressful job whose demands too often seem way beyond my capabilities.

And that evening, as I prayed the Lord's Prayer before turning off the light, I came to this verse: "Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven" - and Mrs. Eddy's spiritual sense of it: "Enable us to know, as in heaven, so on earth, God is omnipotent, supreme."

And I stopped.

And this is what came to me:

So you're dreading going to work tomorrow? Turn it around! See what Love is preparing for you. See the blessing of working God's work, of being His reflection. Don't indulge in dread or unease or dis-ease about work! Rejoice to simply be His image and likeness.

Bring that rejoicing to work with you. Dissatisfaction, unease, dread, fear, laziness, willfulness, egotism are not qualities that God gives you. So don't exercise them! Be alert to this! Rejoice that you are reflection! Rejoice that you work as God works! Get ego out of the way and see what He is doing - what He is expressing through you, as you! And for heaven's sakes, be grateful!!

"Thy will be done in earth - right where I am - as it is in Heaven." God enables us to know that, as in Heaven, so on earth, He really is omnipotent, supreme. He gives you willingness, ease, joyful expectancy, energy, selflessness, gratitude. Work these! Apply these! Yield to these! That is your job.

God is relaxed, even easy-going! while being omnipotent. He does not run around wildly in a panic to get things done. He moves with majesty! With sure steps and thorough focus. He speaks and it is done. All His work is luminous and precise. All His work is effortless and relaxed - even as "light emits light without effort" - dazzilylingly effective.

And God smoothes out what needs to be smoothed. He roughs up what needs to be roughed. He stops what needs to be stopped. He starts what needs to be started. He completes what needs to be completed. He works what needs to be worked.

Why? Because His already all-harmonious will is done in earth - right where you are - exactly as it is in already all-harmonious Heaven. And He enables you to know it! and to see it! and to be it! to be His will being done, His supremecy being made manifest.

Here. Now. Ever.

The weight of personal responsibility disappears in this effortless light of reflection, in this understanding of your true place and relationship to God.

Thank You Father-Mother God for this Truth. Thank You for Your Goodness, for being the Adorable One. Thank You for enabling us to know, as in heaven, so on earth, we don't have to be omnipotent, supreme - that's Your job! But thank You for awakening us to our role as reflection - of being what You are, of seeing what You, Divine Love, have prepared for us, and in rejoicing in Your complete and effortless creation.

And thank You most of all for being here, being ever-present with us, for guiding us as we fulfill our purpose as Your children: to see what You, divine Love, have prepared.

You enable us to know that your loving work is done; that it is perfectly complete and perfectly good. And that You are omnipotent, supreme. And our job today is to simply witness Your Love, Your power, and live it, and rejoice.

Thank You Father.

You are not left out of the Kingdom of God!

"Thy kingdom come."
Thy kingdom is come. Thou art everpresent.

God is everpresent.

Do you get this? Do you accept what this means?

God is present with you.

Right here. Right now.

You begin to learn this first by learning to love God for who He really is - divine Truth, Life, Love itself.

And you practice this love for God by loving His creation: by actually sincerely loving yourself. Loving your own ego? No. Just the opposite: by loving the you God made.

In fact it's only when you put aside that little me-me-me clamoring for attention, you begin to notice - intuit even - the kingdom, the presence, of God. You hear Him telling you about every lovely God-like quality that you already embody. These qualities are God's gift to you. They awaken in you so you look like Him. So you can learn to love yourself as God made you. So you can learn to love the real you as His image and likeness.

Then, and only then, can you love another as you love yourself. Love the real them as much as you love the real you. Love the them that is God's likeness.

"Jesus replied: 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'"

When you're living Love, you're in the kingdom.

Get busy.

"Our Father..."

"Our Father which art in heaven."
Our Father-Mother God all-harmonious.

"Our Father"! This is Christ Jesus talking - and he is including us - all of us - in his family. He is inviting us to accept his Father as also our Father, that we are part of His divine Family.

When Jesus said "Our" - he didn't just mean those random people who happened to be listening to him during his Sermon on the Mount. No. He's talking about the kind of "Our" that includes everyone in the universe. And so yes, that means it includes you - no matter what, no matter if you're good, bad, or indifferent. Jesus' prayer includes you.

Don't believe it?

Think about something else Jesus said about God:

"He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust."

That pretty much includes everyone, doesn't it?

God's love is unconditional. It pours out on everyone and everything like rain and sunlight. The only difference is in people's willingness to accept it!

So think about this first verse of Jesus' Prayer: "Our Father...." Think about what it means about God. What it means about you. What it means about how Jesus would see you right here, right now: loved, cared for, included in His family.

What a gift we all have been given by Jesus in his Word "Our Father." To know God, divine Love, as our Source, our Parent, our Heredity, our Family.

Do you feel His warm sun shining down on you? Do you feel His cool nurturing rain of Love?

Are you accepting it?

It's yours if you do.

It's even yours if you don't.

"Our Father which art in heaven."
Our Father-Mother God, all-harmonious, ever-present, all-inclusive, all-embracing, unconditionally Loving you right here, right now.

"Desire is prayer..."

"Our Father which art in heaven."
"Our Father-Mother God, all-harmonious."

Have you ever stopped to think where your yearning for "something better, higher, holier" comes from? Have you ever stopped to realize that it comes from God?

God speaks to us through our intuition, through our yearning, through our desire. "Thoughts unspoken are not unknown to the divine Mind. Desire is prayer; and no loss can occur from trusting God with our desires, that they may be moulded and exalted before they take form in words and in deeds."

God stirs you to yearn, to wake up to your personal inability, to need to trust your desires to Him.

Why? Because no matter what other solutions you try - drugs, sex, rock-and-roll (or whatever other substitute for real fulfillment you choose) - He alone can fulfill your desire. That is because, at its root, all desire is for that "something better, higher, holier," something powerfully good, something lasting, something more than you can get or make or steal on your own. It is your desire for your oneness with God. He is stirring you - right now - to awake in His likeness, to see yourself as He always already sees you, to be what He already "be's" you!

All desire - no matter how good or bad - is a form of prayer. And the outcome of that prayer is completely based on what - or who - you trust your desires to!

Try trusting them to God. God is always stirring you to want to wake up to Him, to seek so you can find Him, to knock so He can open your heart, to ask so He can tell you "My son... you are always with me and everything I have is yours."

Our Father which art in heaven.
Our Father-Mother God, all-harmonious

Seek Him. He's as close as your desire.

"After this manner therefore pray ye..."

"Our Master taught his disciples one brief prayer, which we name after him the Lord's Prayer. Our Master said, "After this manner therefore pray ye," and then he gave that prayer which
covers all human needs."

"Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you:"

Express your desires this way. Offer them up - sacrifice them - give them up! And for what?

"Not my will, but Thine, be done!"

Not my will - my desire - but Thy will, Thy desire be done. Where? in consciousness first, in soul, in thought awakening to a new and higher purer sense of desire, a desire that is:

• awakened from all egotism by the fire of "Hallowed be Thy name"
• healed of all loneliness by the fire of "Thy kingdom come"
• purged of all obstinance by the fire of "Thy will be done"
• cured of all lack by the fire of "Give us this day our daily bread"
• lifted out of all selfishness by the fire of "Forgive us our debts"
• led out of all temptation by the fire of "Deliver us from evil"

So that all that all that remains in us is our love of God, our Father-Mother, the all-harmonious Adorable One - who is everpresent with us here and now, all-power to awaken us to our true being as Life's reflection, to our embodiment of Truth, our being as Love-made-manifest.

What more could you possibly ask for?

So thank You for Your Life that You give us, Your Truth that awakens in us, Your Love that You shine in us. This is Your light. We will not let it hide under a bushel! This light is Your embodiment. There is nothing about us that is or can be unlike that Light. Your light shines in us, as us, everpresent Love reflected in love. And Love always leads us to exactly where we need to be and to what we love to do.

Thank you Father-Mother God.

"Jesus beheld in Science..."

"Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals. In this perfect man the Saviour saw God's own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick."

Jesus beheld in Science the Hallowed Name of God where sinning mortal names and natures appeared to mortals. In the expression of this Hallowed Name of God, the Saviour saw God's own Nature made manifest and this correct view of man healed the sick.

The Hallowed Name of God is an influence ever present in human consciousness - the influence - the power and presence - of the Adorable One.

How would you act and behave and live if you knew this? If you knew the Adorable One was actually this close? What if you knew you could live without fear? What would your life look like? What would change? What would you be thinking about? what would you be doing? and how would you be living ?

Look hard and pay attention! Because a life without fear is exactly what God's will is for you - His prayer for you.

So pray:

Thy fearless will be done in earth as it is in heaven.
Enable us to know, as in heaven, so on earth, God's fearless love for you is omnipotent, supreme.

So give us this day our daily bread - our daily at-one-ment, our daily communion, our daily fearless experience of being Your complete expression. Let that grace be ours today. Let that unconditional Love feed all fearful famished affections - feed us Life and that abundantly, limitless, pure, whole, healthy, holy.

And let all fear of debts, of "not enough," of tresspasses, grudges, lack, want - let it all go instead by "keeping your eyes off your circumstances and keeping them on the Lord." Let it all go by living the Love that fulfills all want, cancels all debt, eliminates all sense of tresspass.

And let that Love lead us out of our fear of trails and temptations. And let that Love deliver us from fear of sin (which is all the "love" of sin is), fear of sickness (ditto!), and yes even the fear of death, yes, deliver us from the "love" of death - thinking that death is a solution, a way out, an answer for any problem - because it isn't. Death is an enemy. Life - abundant Life - is always God's answer, God's demand. Live!

For Your kingdom - Your everpresence - is Life that annihilates all fear. Your Truth-power overrules all fear and Your perfect glorious Love rules out all fear. Forever. Because You are infinite (here!), all-power, all Life, Truth, Love, over all, and All. And this Truth is the law of annihilation to all fear.

Amen.

Rejoice in God's work today

"Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven."
Enable us to know, as in heaven, so on earth, God is omnipotent, supreme.

I'm grateful for the work I have to do today. Let "Thy will be done" in me. Let Thy Mind direct my steps, Thy purpopse be fulfilled today.

Or better: let me acknowledge that Your work is already done, that Your kingdom is already come because You are everpresent. Right now.

I rejoice to see Your work made manifest today! Enable me - and all of us to know, that, as in heaven, so on earth, Life is omnipotent, supreme.

God never sees sadness or loss or incapacity! God only sees you as His perfect image and likeness: joyous, upright, whole, free - without a single element of error or fear or loss. Why? Because "...nothing inharmonious can enter being, for Life is God."

Give us then this day our daily bread, our daily communion with You, our daily satisfaction and fulfillment, our daily yearnings / needs / dreams / and hopes-not-dared-hoped-for to be revealed as already here and now abundantly fulfilled. Nothing shattered beyond repair. No fear of loss or loneliness. No failed efforts or faithfulness neglected. No silent hopes repeatedly dashed. But only an awakening to You: Love being reflected in love - all Good reflected in goodness and all Soul in bliss.

This "grace for today" that our Father-Mother gives us, feeds all our famished affections, forgives all our debts and doubts, our losses and limitations, and leads us away from trials and self-denials, delivers us from tresspassing with evil - false seeing, false feeling, false being, into - what?

The awakening to the everpresence of Life. To the all-power of Truth. The glory of infinite Love. To the Father-Mother who is over all. To the Adorable One God - who is All.

As in Heaven...

"Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven."
Enable us to know, as in heaven, so on earth, God is omnipotent, supreme.

I was flying home from Denver a few weeks ago and I was looking out the window as the plane flew west into the sunset. It was so clear. I could see everything below me.

And then it occured to me: this is like God's view of things!

The "altitude" of God's vision is absolutely all-harmonioius - heavenly. He sees everything clearly. Nothing is hidden. He sees everything and everyone as connected, beautiful, and unpolluted. And He sees all His vast creation at once.

And God already sees His will done in us. He already sees us, with Him, in Heaven.

Enable us to know...

"Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven."
Enable us to know, as in heaven, so on earth, God is omnipotent, supreme.

So, yes, "enable us to know" instead of just "believe."

And yes, "give us this day our daily bread" - just 7 words, but what powerful words they are. They give us everything. They "feed our famished affections" - all our needs, desires, wants - all satisfied and fed. How? because they feed us our daily communion with God, the Bread of Life - they feed us our daily experience of Him, give us our daily grace, our daily peace, and joy, and power - that overcomes all sense of absence or lack or need.

So yes. Give us of this Bread that fulfills all hunger or lack or want, this Ever-Presence that abundantly satisfies every human need.

And so we'll be led - not into evil - but saved from sin by His ever-presence, freed from disease by His omnipotent power, and delivered even from death by His glory - forever.

Are you willing?

"Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven."
Enable us to know, as in heaven, so on earth, God is omnipotent, supreme.

Are you willing to actually listen to this verse? Are you willing to hear what it says to your soul? To risk everything and hear what it is saying to you? To let go of your "ego" and reflect only the Divine Ego? To let yourself be sliced open by the crystaline knives of Spirit - to let everything unlike God be cut away? Are you willing? Will you risk it? Risk losing your "self" and be reborn into something new, something true, something really really you?

Thy kingdom come is Thy will being done

"Thy kingdom come."
Thy kingdom is come; Thou art everpresent.

"Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven."
Enable us to know, as in heaven, so on earth, God is omnipotent, supreme.

Because God is everpresent - right here, right now - His omnipotent will is also. His will, His desire for you, His "prayer" for you really, is already present, right here on earth - right here with you - just as it already is in heaven.

OK so yeah sure (I can hear you thinking) right! My life is such a mess it hardly feels like God is present - let alone measuring up to what God's will probably is like!

Maybe so. But then remember what it says in Psalms:

"Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?
If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.
If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea;
Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me."

If God is that everpresent, then surely it could even be said that His will for you - right here where you are in earth - is being done just as it is in heaven.

Maybe phrase it this way: "And Thy all-harmonious Will for me is continuously stirring in me, unfolding in me, creating me, awakening me - even 'if I make my bed in hell.' (let alone earth!)"

That's because no matter what your life looks like right now, "even there" God is present. With you. Right here. Right now.

OK where is He?

In conciousness.

His intuitions are always with you, stirring you, deep down, to live. His angel-thoughts are leading you to grow up (!) in His likeness. His expectancy guides you, His faithfulness guards you, His understanding stirs you, His reality clarifies you.

To... what?

To be like exactly Him.

Because that is God's will for you. It is for you to shine like the sun! to live an abundant life! to be the living evidence - to everyone around you - of the love that is God.

That Love you live is His everpresence. That light you shine is His all-harmonious will made manifest.

Manifest as you. His image and likeness. Perfect. Pure. Blessed. Right here. Right now.

...So act like it!

The completeness of our daily bread

"Give us this day our daily bread"
Give us grace for today; feed the famished affections.

Give us this day our daily bread, our daily communion with God, our daily grace, our daily experience of His unconditional Love. That Love feeds all famished affections. ThatLove satisfies all our deepest yearnings. That Love supplies all our true need.

And being filled up full with the Love of God, we have the natural ability to reflect His Love to everyone around us. With our famished affections fed, we awaken to our right to love our neighbor as ourself - to reflect the unconditional love of God to all those famished hearts we see around us.

If our famished affections are fed, we can have no sense of debt or lack or burden of owing or being owed. Because God is awakening us to see that Love forgives all debts by proving there actually are none! Love awakens us from our false witnessing of others (or ourselves!) as lacking, as debtors and tresspassers! And when you receive the incredible Love that is the only source of real forgiveness, you begin to learn how to forgive - love- like God does. And all sense of others owing you vanishes.

"Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors."
And Love is reflected in love.

There is no "you owe me" in the recipe of the Bread of Life! Instead God insists we eliminate that ingredient of a personal sense of indebtedness out of Life. God insists on being reflected completely in us, so that we may not only see others as God already sees them, but (usually harder) see ourselves as He sees us. And right this moment, God sees you (and everyone!) as debtless, flawless, complete, with every need supplied by - who? by Him. Always by Him.

"And lead us not into tempation, but deliver us from evil."
And God leadeth us not into temptation, but delivereth us from sin, disease, and death.

And once you've awakened to - glimpsed - your true nature as God's loved image and likeness, do you think you'd fall back into tempation again? Well, maybe. But it becomes increasingly harder, especially as you pray, really pray, the Lord's Prayer.

Praying the Lord's Prayer makes you much more aware of the lies of evil. Why? Because you are tasting your daily Bread of Life. You are tasting the Truth. You are learning what the real meal - the real deal - tastes like. And how satisifying it is. And what a contrast it is to the cheap junk-food evil seems to offer up.

And isn't this then how God leads you? Isn't this how God delivers you from all the Liar's lies: sin, disease, even death? By giving you, through the Lord's Prayer, a taste of your daily Bread, your daily communion with God, your daily experience of God?

And once you taste what God, Love, really is - taste that True Bread - and feel it feeding, awakening, and enlivening you, the contrast is so sharp that you can spot the trial, the temptation - the Liar - a mile away.

So "Give us this day our daily bread." Give us grace for today; feed the famished affections - ours and everyone's. And learn how that Grace forgives and teaches forgiveness, how God loves and reflects love in you, as you. And so know that God will always lead you from trails and deliver you from any sense of evil. Why? Because God actually is the only presence, the only power, the only glory of Life, Truth, and Love there ever was, is, or will be. God is not only over all, He is All.

And you know what? He loves you.

Amen.

Forgive us our debts...

"Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors."
And Love is reflected in love.

Need love? Turn it around! Give Love!

Need friends? Turn it around! Be one! Need to feel appreciated? Appreciate those around you! Need joy? Be grateful!

God's kingdom - His presence, His authority, His love - is already right here where you are. Where? in your heart. In your consciousness.

You intuitively already know this.

Jesus said, "Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you."

So let it out! Let God's Kingdom of Love shine! Let your face be the face of Love-at-work in the world. This is your divine right. This is your natural state of being. No. It's more than that: it is your God-given purpose.

"Forgive us our debts [our lack of Love] as we forgive our debtors [forgive those we think are lacking love for us or for anyone]."
And Love, God, is always reflected in love.

Give us this moment our daily Love

"Give us this day our daily bread."
Give us grace for today; feed the famished affections.

Give us this day our daily Love, our daily experience of Love, our daily communion with Love.

Give us the grace that is Love-in-action, that feeds not only our famished affections, but impells us to reflect the Love-that-is-God by feeding the famished affections of those around us. Or rather, that we may awaken to see and appreciate the Love that is always already present within everyone we meet!

And so forgive us our lack of seeing Love, of living Love, of giving Love, of being Love. Forgive us our lack of Grace - the unconditional Love that God shines out non-stop "on the evil and the good."

The Adorable One is only reflected in us consciously to the extent that we are being adorable! Love always demands that we live our love out loud. No sticking it under a bushel!

Eat this Bread of Life by being loving.

So give us this moment - let us receive even just for this moment - all the Love that God is giving us, all the Love that is shining in us, as us, through us, to us. Let us receive it all - and reflect it all - right now.

God's will is already done

"Thy will be done in earth as it is in Heaven."
Enable us to know, as in heaven, so on earth, God is omnipotent, supreme.

"Give us this day our daily bread."
Give us grace for today; feed the famished affections.


What is God's will in heaven?

Have you ever thought about that? Is there anything opposing God in heaven? is there turmoil or strife or confusion or sin, disease, death there?

No. Because that's His kingdom, where He has complete authority.

Well then, what about God's will in earth? Does He have complete authority here too?

Yes.

And Jesus is showing us in this verse that His will - as it is in heaven - is ours to awake to right here where we are seemingly in earth.

So then, couldn't you also pray this verse like this:

"Thy will be done in me as it is in heaven."

Or how about this?

"Thy will be done in body as it is in Soul."

And consider "Soul" here as understood as a synonym for God. Therefore:

Enable us to know, as in Soul, so in body, God is omnipotent, supreme.

And isn't that where God lives? in heaven, in harmony, in the perfect Soul? and if we are His image and likeness, then can't we expect His will - His desire for us, His yearning for us, His prayer for us - to be absolutely perfect? absolutely heavenly?

Jesus is asking us in this verse of the Lord's Prayer to invite God's will for us into our heart and soul. To awaken to the fact that God's will is already done in you - just as it obviously is already done in heaven.

And that is why we can receive this day - right now - our daily bread: God's perfect will for us it to be just like Him - to be His image and likeness.

Our daily bread is our daily companioning with God, our daily communion with God, our daily experience of God. And what more could we possibly need if we are at-one with Him? being fed the Bread of Life that feeds our every need?

This Bread - this communion - feeds every famished affection, feeds all our need for Love. And that daily experience of God awakens us to our daily forgiving-as-we-forgive, our daily being led - away from trials and turmoil, being delivered from sin, disease, and death.

And so we find ourselves being fed by His grace - and fed not only the unbelievably wonderful unconditional Love of God, but also feeding others by our reflection of that Love, in our own grace, our own peace, and joy, and power.

That is God's will for you, being done in you, just as it is in Heaven. And that communion feeds you and moves you with grace. It awakens you to the fact that, God knows you perfectly and sees you perfectly.

And even if we don't always see ourselves this way, God knows we don't need to be humanly perfect to still "feed the famished affections" - to still be His blessing "on earth as it is in heaven."

Exploring spiritual sense and the Lord's Prayer

"Spiritual sense, contradicting the material senses, involves intuition, hope, faith, understanding, fruition, reality." - Science & Health, p. 298

God is unknowable to the physical senses, but He is immanently knowable to your spiritual sense.

And yes, you do have spiritual sense. Everyone does.

Your intuition tells you there is something real about Love - that is bigger than any person or thing, that if there really is a God, a conscious understanding God, then God must have something seriously to do with Life itself, with Truth itself, with Love - infinite Love - itself.

The material senses never communicate this kind of appreciation of God. The material senses only look at things. The material senses never look at thoughts. And the material senses aren't completely reliable, as anyone who as ever felt a wallet not actually in a pocket, or seen a mirage in the desert, can tell you.

But we all have a capacity to sense things spiritually.

The quote above, from Science & Health, gives you a great way to start thinking about - and exercising - your spiritual sense.

Start with something simple and kinda fun: try just listening to your intuition.

• Does your intuition challenge you to be more awake, more active, more authentic to who you honestly are?
• Does it inspire you to be generous, loving, unselfish, strong?
• Does it motivate you to pray, to love, to be of service to others?

If so, then you're really on to something big. And if you act on it, your life will be transformed into something inspired.

If you don't, you'll probably just continue to dance to whatever easy sleezy lazy tune the material senses sucker you into.

It's always a choice.

So try this out: actually listen to your intution. Yeah. Right now! Listen to it! What's it saying?

If it's insipring you, then open yourself to hope!

And hope as in expectancy, not hope as in "wishful thinking." You know like the expectancy you have when someone you really love is on their way over to see you and you know they'll be arriving at any minute and you get yourself all ready and straighten up your house and then run to the window to watch for them - that kind of expectancy! That's the kind of expecancy that spiritual sense inspires.

And so then be faithful. Watch for your inspiration to bloom and grow. Wait for it. Work for it. And where does your inspiration lead?

Into more Life, more Truth, more Love. Embodied first in your thought, then in your actions, and then in your experience.

The material senses, and even just your old habits of thinking, will say "It will never come. It's useless. There's no point. This is stupid." But that's the old way of thinking and the old way of doing and it will never awaken you to the Life that is already at hand, to the Truth that demands your best, and to the Love that is already in your heart ready to be shared extravagantly!

And when you drop the old ways - and you will, either "through suffering or through Science" as Mrs. Eddy put it - your struggle and effort will blossom into understanding.

This always happens, just like the sun rising every morning.

Ever learn a new sport or start a new hobby? Isn't there a point where you move from the intuition that it will be fun, into the expectancy of that fun, to the practice (faithfulness) of developing your new fun talent?

And isn't there then usually a hard spot where you feel like you've hit a wall? THAT is the place where you're always tempted to just give up. BUT that is also exactly the place where you are about to make a huge new breakthrough into really understanding what you're doing.

If you give up, you quit and you never know how close you were to success. But if you push on, and you move to a completely new depth of experience. That is the exact same process with exercising your spiritual sense.

And when you make that breakthrough, you really begin to see some unexpectedly great results. They always unique to you. You will intuitively (!) recognize them. You will feel the newness and the growth and the challenge of continuing your progress! These are the result of your expectancy put into action, the reward of your faithfulness to the work you needed to do, the fruit of your maturing understanding.

And so you find your spiritual sense has shown you to a clearer, more awake, more authentic, more God-like you.

"For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever."
For God is infinite, all-power, all Life, Truth, Love, over all, and All.

Seeing your life through the spiritual sense of the Lord's Prayer

"Give us this day our daily bread."
Give us grace for today; feed the famished affections.

What if you accepted - right now - that you have a perfect life? that you have perfect work to do, perfect love to share, a perfect home to live in, a perfect relationship to enjoy?

OK so you're thinking "what? are you nuts??"

And yes, to the "normal" sense of things, accepting something like this is probably ludicrous if not downright nuts.

But intuitively, you know that there is something more to Life than just what your circumstances currently look like.

You know that things aren't always as fixed or final as they seem. You know that, even when things are dark, that there's always a little light somewhere, that there is something more, something good going on.

And you know that if you quiet the fear down, you can feel it intuitively.

And that is because we all have more than just our senses to tell us what's going on in the world. We also have spiritual sense.

"Spiritual sense, contradicting the material senses, involves intuition, hope, faith, understanding, fruition, reality."

Spiritual sense leads you to see things in a different way. It leads you to see openings. Inituitively you know there are good things going on. Your expectancy - hope - sensitizes you to every glimmer of good. Your faithfulness to that expectancy let's you act in positive helpful ways. And that faithfulness awakens you to understand where your life and love really live. You begin to taste the fruits of your prayer and your labor. You begin to wake up to what really matters. You start to see Life as a blessing.

And this is exactly how God sees you:

• Already blessed.
• Already happy, pleased, content.
• Already whole, healthy, and holy.
• Already complete.

In other words, already His image and likeness!

So how would you feel if you accepted this as true? How would you act? What would you do? How would you think about your life - right now - if you accepted God's view of it?

And what if you understood that God's view of you is the only view that is actually correct!

OK so that is hard to accept sometimes. Maybe all the time. And yes, you can refuse to accept this and act according to what your material senses are telling you.

But you actually have a choice.

• You can accept God's view of you.
• And you can act according to what your spiritual senses are telling you.

It is always your choice. And it is always just a mental switch:

• from looking at all the lack you see, to feeling gratitude for even the smallest goodness
• from feeling separated from love, to actively living Love
• from thinking you're all on your own, to awakening to your existing likeness to God

Practice doing this and see how it changes the way you see your life and your world and the way you "live and move and breathe" in it.

Remember, God sees you as already supplied with every good idea, as greatly needed and dearly loved.

"Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?
If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.
If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea;
Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.
If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me."

This is more than just poetry. And it is certainly more than just another blog entry. This really is how much God actually loves you.

Let God reveal His love to you. Open your eyes to what is possible, to what He has prepared for you, to what His holy purpose is for you.

It may be that your circumstances won't change much. Or it may be that they will change a lot. Either way, a wonderful preacher once said: "keep your eyes off your circumstances and keep them on the Lord."

And your intuition will guide you to where you need to be and what you need to do. The love in your heart will awaken you to the good already around you. And your spiritual senses will never fail you, but always lead you to exactly where you will grow the most.

Mrs. Eddy poem "Feed My Sheep" says it this way: "I will listen for Thy voice, lest my footsteps stray. I will follow, and rejoice all the rugged way."

The path may be rough and rocky, but that means you are at a point of great growth and opportunity. Listen to your honest intuition and hasten to follow it. Blessings will flow as naturally as flowers bloom after rain.

Give us this day our daily companioning with You Father, our daily communion with You, our daily experience of You.

And give us grace for today - not only Your unconditional Love, but Your peace and joy and power! And feed our famished affections that we may feed the famished affections of those around us. That we may be Your image and likeness in deed and in Truth.

The power of the Lord's Prayer

The words of the Lord's Prayer have power. You've felt it. You've seen it.

But where exctly does that power lie?

The same place where all words have power: in their meaning - and in your understanding of, and response to, their meaning.

Just repeating words, even good words, doesn't light up those words with meaninng. It doesn't inspire you. And it certainly doesn't motivate you to actually do anything!

Words that aren't understood can't be acted on. And if words aren't acted on then, well, they're just words. Hence St. Paul's saying "the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life." Or as they like to say in Texas, "All hat and no cattle!"

And if this is your approach to the Lord's Prayer - just saying it, instead of actually praying it - well then, that's just about useless.

Would you "pray" your grocery list and expect the refrigerator to stock itself?

No.

But if you read your grocery list and then act on it - actually go to the store and buy what you need to feed you - then you'd be understanding what the grocery list means by putting it into action.

So consider approaching the Lord's Prayer with the same intent: to put what it means into action with all your heart and soul and mind and strength. Let it change you. Let it move you. Let it scrub you down and clean you up. Let it awaken you to who you are as God's likeness. Let it save you.

So don't say it, pray it!

As you do, you will blessed in ways you never could imagine.

"For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever."
For divine Mind is infinite - is right here with you - is all the power there is, all the Life there is, all the Truth, all the Love; is over all, and All.

Meeting Jesus in the Lord's Prayer

Have you ever stopped to think that every time you pray the Lord's Prayer, it's like meeting Jesus? meeting him in your heart? in your consciousness?

And have you ever wondered what it must've been like to have been in his personal presence all those thousands of years ago? Wondered what it would've been like to feel his gaze lock onto yours, even for a moment? To be seen, really seen, by his Christ-consciousness? To be immediately healed - in an instant - of everything in you that's unlike God?

And whether you received comfort from him (or a rebuke!) it would've been the most profound and life-changing blessing you could possibly imagine.

So offer yourself that same way to his Prayer, the Lord's Prayer. Pray it as if you were hearing it for the first time, straight from Jesus. Because this Prayer is the closest thing we have to being in his conscious healing presence, of being part of his constant communion with God, Our Father.

And it is this Christ-consciousness that permates Jesus' Prayer. And when you pray it (not just say it) but really honestly yearingly pray it, and it comes directly to your consciousness with "healing in His wings."

So meet Jesus in his Prayer. Let his healing Christ-consciousness be yours. Let that Father-Mother love of God that Jesus knew so well embrace you and awaken you to your already all-harmonious being in Him.

"For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever."
For God is infinite - here and now - all-power, all Life, Truth, Love, over all, and All.

And that "All" certainly includes you.

Deliver us from evil

"And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil."
And God leadeth us, not into temptation, but delivereth us from sin, disease, and death.

Where does evil come from?

Jesus gives the best explanation when he calls the devil (evil) "a liar and the father of it."

Evil is a lie.

Does a lie have power? Only if you mistakenly (or willfully) accept the lie as truth. Then evil can seem very very real indeed.

And what can save us from sin, disease, and death - especially when they feel so very very real?

Only one thing: the Christ: God's Truth, accepted and understood and demonstrated.

And that is like turning on a light in a dark scarey place. And that darkness is powerless against the light.

Here's a little of what "Science & Health" as this to say about this:

S&H 16:15
"In the phrase, 'Deliver us from evil,' the original properly reads, 'Deliver us from the evil one.' This reading strengthens our scientific apprehension of the petition, for Christian Science teaches us that 'the evil one,' or one evil, is but another name for the first lie and all liars.

S&H 186:17
"Evil is self-assertive. It says: 'I am a real entity, overmastering good.' This falsehood should strip evil of all pretensions. The only power of evil is to destroy itself."

S&H 207:8
"God is not the creator of an evil mind. Indeed, evil is not Mind. We must learn that evil is the awful deception and unreality of existence. Evil is not supreme; good is not helpless; nor are the so-called laws of matter primary, and the law of Spirit secondary. Without this lesson, we lose sight of the perfect Father, or the divine Principle of man."

S&H 285:7
"What, then, is the material personality which suffers, sins, and dies? It is not man, the image and likeness of God, but man's counterfeit, the inverted likeness, the unlikeness called sin, sickness, and death. The unreality of the claim that a mortal is the true image of God is illustrated by the opposite natures of Spirit and matter, Mind and body, for one is intelligence while the other is non-intelligence."

S&H 540:5
"In Isaiah we read: 'I make peace, and create evil. I the Lord do all these things;' but the prophet referred to divine law as stirring up the belief in evil to its utmost, when bringing it to the surface and reducing it to its common denominator, nothingness. The muddy river-bed must be stirred in order to purify the stream. In moral chemicalization, when the symptoms of evil, illusion, are aggravated, we may think in our ignorance that the Lord hath wrought an evil; but we ought to know that God's law uncovers so-called sin and its effects, only that Truth may annihilate all sense of evil and all power to sin."

S&H 507:24
"Infinite Mind creates and governs all, from the mental molecule to infinity. This divine Principle of all expresses Science and art throughout His creation, and the immortality of man and the universe. Creation is ever appearing, and must ever continue to appear from the nature of its inexhaustible source. Mortal sense inverts this appearing and calls ideas material. Thus misinterpreted, the divine idea seems to fall to the level of a human or material belief, called mortal man. But the seed is in itself, only as the divine Mind is All and reproduces all--as Mind is the multiplier, and Mind's infinite idea, man and the universe, is the product. The only intelligence or substance of a thought, a seed, or a flower is God, the creator of it. Mind is the Soul of all. Mind is Life, Truth, and Love which governs all."

"The great fact remains that evil is not mind. Evil has no power, no intelligence, for God is good, and therefore good is infinite, is All."

"For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever."
For God is infinite, all-power, all Life, Truth, Love, over all, and All.

God's will done in you as it is done in Heaven

"Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven." Enable us to know, as in heaven, so on earth, God is omnipotent, supreme.

Enable us to know, as in Heaven so in us, God sees His omnipotent supreme will being done.

Right here where you are, you have the ability to see the universe as it really is, as under God's complete control, as all-harmonious, under God's perfect care and revealing. His will is done in earth - in your present state of consciousness - just as it is done in heaven - His state of consciousness, which yours reflects.

To the extent that you awaken to this, you experience God feeding your need of Love, forgiving all dreams of debt or lack or loneliness, leading you and delivering you from any nightmare of sin, sickness or death, revealing in you His kingdom, already present, already complete, already all-harmonious.

So you see that this is not mind-over-matter, or even Mind-over-matter. It is an awakening to the fact that you are, in fact, completely spiritual! That you are actually already - here and now - God's perfect image and likeness, without a single material (i.e., limited / mortal) element.

This is how God knows you. This is how God sees you. This is how God creates you. And it is your divine right to know, see, and be His exact image and likeness. In fact, it is more than your divine right. It is your actual present state of being. And it is the actual present state of being for everyone and everything around you: your neighbor, your community, the world, the universe.

Mrs. Eddy put it this way: "Jesus beheld in Science [just like God does], the perfect man where sinning mortal man appears to mortals. In this perfect man, the Saviour saw God's own likeness [God actually being made manifest], and this correct view of man healed the sick [awoke the "sick" to their already-present perfection as God-being]."

And God's will leads us not into trials or temptation - dreams of sin, disease, death - but His omnipotent will always delivers us from every wilfull, uncomfortable, limited sense of ourselves. Because His kingdom is already come, and His kingdom is already "within you."

A simple answer

What if your prayer is simply to be able to accept all that God is pouring out to you today? to receive all His gifts? His ideas? His inspirations and intutions? and then be grateful for them by living them out loud in your life?

What if you entered into what God is doing for you? What if you accept that you get to see the flawless unfolding of God's day, today? that you get to be the flawless unfolding of God's day today? that you get to declare the flawless unfolding of God's day today?

Then your prayer would simply be: Thy will be done.

Spiritual sense and prayer

"Spiritual sense, contradicting the material senses, involves intuition, hope, faith, understanding, fruition, reality."

Intuition is the seed of desire, of prayer. Intuition speaks wordlessly to your receptive heart. It says "this is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, or when ye turn to the left." It nudges that seed-of-desire in you into an awakening feeling that something wonderful is actually possible. This gives you hope.

And Hope is not just some vague wishful thinking. The Hope that God gives you is much more solid than that. The Hope God gives you is expectancy. And expectancy is what opens that seed of prayer. Expectancy is what knows - when the night is darkest - that the dawn will come. Hope is what carries you from indulging fearful thinking into risking prayerful thinking. Hope is a glimmer of "knowing before seeing." And when Hope reaches up from the light of spiritual intuition, it is never blind. Hope right now sees the flower in your sprouting seedling prayer.

Faith, which is Hope-put-into-practice, nurtures and supports the growth of your seedling prayer. Practicing your Faith by being faithful to your expectancy over and over and over again - strengthens your Faith. Practice teaches you what works and doesn't work, what's true and what's not true, what's real and dependable and what's false and worthless. All that practice builds your Faith-muscle! And that helps your prayer grow straight and tall, blossoming into:

Understanding. And when you actually now understand your desire, your prayer, you are awake to it. You are aware of it's real meaning. Your eyes are opened, and your mind is alert, and your practice is more sure and confident than ever. You shed the driftwood dreck that might have been sticking to your prayer - tossing aside the cheap imitation answers, seeing through this misleading sidetracks, ditching the counterfeit solutions. And so your experience the beneficial results of your prayer. You demonstrate through your intuition, hope, faith and understanding, what is spiritually true. You experience something new. You feel something solid and good and wonderful. Your prayer just naturally ripens into:

Fruition. And why? Because trusting God with your desire always bears fruit. And what is the fruit of your prayer? It is always:

Reality. Yes. Reality.

You can reach this point in an instant, an hour, or a lifetime. But time doesn't matter because even right now desire is alive in your heart. And this desire, viewed rightly, is always God stirring in you, drawing you closer, awakening you to who you really are, awakening you to your likeness to Him, your at-one-ment with Him, declaring what's really true: you are God being.

Rejoice then in God as All-in-all, and you as His perfect and complete image and likeness: pure, healthy, whole, and holy. This is who you always have been and always will be. And most importantly, this is who you are now.

"For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever."
For God is infinite, all-power, all Life, Truth, Love, over all, and All.

God's gift of contentment

"Give us this day our daily bread."
Give us grace for today; feed the famished affections.

The meal that God, divine Love, prepares for you, is not just three times a day. God gives you His daily bread moment by moment.

His bread is the daily inspiration He gives you, the daily ideas He sends you, the loving intuitions that feed your deepest need. It is this continuous communion with Him, as shown in the Lord's Prayer, that awakens you to realize that you actually already have all that you need:

You have an adorably loving Father-Mother
You have a safe place to live (His kingdom)
You have sure training and guidance (His will)
You have all your needs met (His daily bread)
All your mistakes corrected (His forgiveness)
Deliverance from all evil (His leading and deliverance)
And so you have confidence to go forward (under His supremecy)

Keeping your eyes on Him - and off your human circumstances - takes practice. But it opens you up to actually experience the blessings He has already prepared for you. And as you awake to those blessings, and act on them, you find you can be content right now, right here.

This may be the greatest awakening there is: contentment - accepting what Love is giving you right now, actually receiving what Love is already providing and acting on it. You could say that the grace of contentment is the "peace, and joy, and power" of God being made manifest in your thoughts, your actions, your life.

As John Greenleaf Whittier's beautiful hymn says:

"Dear Lord and Father of us all, forgive our foolish ways;
Reclothe us in our rightful mind; in purer lives Thy service find,
In deeper reverence, praise.

"In simple trust like theirs who heard, beside the Syrian sea,
The gracious calling of the Lord, let us like them, without a word
Rise up and follow Thee.

"Breathe through the pulses of desire Thy coolness and They balm;
Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire; speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire,
O still small voice of calm.

"Drop Thy still dews of quietness, till all our strivings cease;
Take from us now the strain and stress, and let our ordered lives confess
The beauty of Thy peace."

The Lord's Prayer and Spiritual Sense

On page 16 of Science & Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy wrote: "Only as we rise above all material sensuousness and sin, can we reach the heaven-born aspiration and spiritual consciousness, which is indicated in the Lord's Prayer and which instantaneously heals the sick. Here let me give what I understand to be the spiritual sense of the Lord's Prayer:"

Mrs. Eddy also wrote: "Spiritual sense, contradicting the material senses, involves intuition, hope, faith, understanding, fruition, reality."

Since the Lord's Prayer involves spiritual sense to be truly prayed understandingly, then ask yourself:

When you pray "Our Father" - what does your intuition tell you about what that means? How hopeful and expectant are you to experience the Adorable One? How faithful are you to His kingdom already within you? Do you understand His will and abide by it, right here where you are just as it is in heaven? Are you experiencing the living Bread of God feeding you? forgiving you? leading and delivering you? Are you accepting the reality that God is the only presence, the only power, the only glory there actually is?

If so, then you are sensing the Lord's Prayer - the Mind of Christ - exactly as Mrs. Eddy did. And she said that the spiritual sense of Jesus' Prayer is one that meets every human need - no exceptions!

If so, then bow in that silent intuitive, expectant, faithful, understanding of Lord's Prayer, and expect to see that Prayer bear fruit, bringing you into the true understanding - and experience - of God's all-harmonious, healthy, whole, and holy reality. Here. And now.

Give us this day our daily salvation

"Give us this day our daily bread."
Give us grace for today; feed the famished affections.

There is nothing blocking your understanding and demonstration of Life, God.

Why?

Because Christ has already rolled away the stone from the place where you've buried your fondest earthly hopes. You have only to walk out of that tomb of dead-end thinking into the sunshine of the everpresent Love of God.

And it is God, not you and not your wishful-thinking prayers, and certainly not your willful-do-it-yourself ego, that feeds your real needs.

In fact, God made you already "delivered" to begin with. Already all-harmonious. Already within His Kingdom. Already under His perfect will and authority. Already His perfect image and likeness.

There is no leaving His Kingdom and then being returned to it. There is only being His image and likeness. Salvation awakens you to what is already true. Salvation is not an agent of changing something bad into something good, or something sick into something well. Salvation awakens you to what God is doing. And God sees you already in the Light. His Light awakens and delivers you from dreaming in all its forms: sin, disease, death. In fact, He made you already awakened, already delivered, already at-one with Him, already whole, healthy, holy - already His image and likeness.

God gives us right now - this day - our daily strength. He always feeds our need for His awakening salvation.

Thy will be done

"Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven."
Enable us to know, as in heaven, so on earth, God is omnipotent, supreme.

All "work" is actually a revelation.

You think: "My hand made this. My thought has created this." But in reality, you are simply witnessing the revelation of what God, the divine Mind, is doing. All work is witnessing God's creation unfolding completely perfectly effortlessly. God works. You, God's reflection, witness it. All that moves is thought. All that is newly seen is an awakening. All that is made manifest, is the effect of the One Cause, God.

This is why all creation, when seen correctly, is actually as painless as is reflection. Does your mirror image hurt when you move your hand? No. And so when God moves, you, God's reflection, can experience no fear or pain or effort or stress. Mind, God, moves your thought to see ever clearer views of Mind's creativity. Mind moves your thought in ever deeper, wider, more focused, more alert and awake, more productive and blessed, ever more inclusive and embracing, discerning and wise, ever more unconditionally loving ways.

"As mortals gain more correct views of God and man, multitudinous objects of creation, which before were invisible, will become visible. When we realize that Life is Spirit, never in nor of matter, this understanding will expand into self-completeness, finding all in God, good, and needing no other consciousness. Spirit and its formations are the only realities of being."

God's will was done, is done, and will be done right here in "earth" (your conciousness) just exactly as it is in heaven (Divine Mind). And what Mind wills is creation, and what you experience is His revelation.

Being saved

I just saved a little rolly-polly bug.

You know the kind, that when you touch them they roll themselves up like a little armored ball?

Well this one had managed to slip under my patio door and probably spent the better part of today hiking across 2/3rds of my bedroom carpet. It must have been an immense effort for the little guy.

So I just picked him up gently, walked him outside, and set him in the flower bed where he would have plenty of leaves to crawl under and things to eat. And just think:

• He probably spent all day to get where I found him struggling.
• And in just an instant, he found himself in a place of comfort and safety.

Isn't this what it's like when you turn your whole heart to God? God who can solve any problem? Who can immediately show you an impossible struggle suddenly over? A difficult journey easily completed? Reveal a sudden shift from sadness to joy? from loss to fulfillment? from illness to wholeness?

God picks you up where you "let Him find you" and His all-Loving power sets everything right in ways you could never imagine on your own.

Right here, right now, with every breath and every thought and every inspiration of love, God is present with you.

"God is light, and in him is no darkness at all." He shines Life and Truth and Love as you - His image and likeness. God radiates understanding, joy, progress, fulfillment - anything and everything that awakens His purpose in you. And His Love for you is unconditional. It springs from His very nature as Love itself. God no more withholds His love for you than the sun withholds its sunshine.

So when you struggle and struggle like that little rolly-polly bug did, or face the darkness of sadness, or fear, or disease, turn to God. Pray - trust your desires for wholeness, holiness, and health - to Him. Let Him pick you up and carry you into the sunshine of His Love. And you will find that those impossibly difficult "dark images of mortal thought" vanish like the powerless shadows they really are.

"For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever."
For God is infinite, all-power, all Life, Truth, Love, over all, and All.

The symmetry of the Lord's Prayer

There is a beautiful "cause and effect" symmetry within the Lord's Prayer, bracketed within two absolute statements of divine Truth:

"Our Father, which art in heaven."

Our Father-Mother God, all-harmonious.

Cause:
"Hallowed be Thy name."
Adorable One

Effect:
"Give us this day our daily bread"
Give us grace for today; feed the famished affections.

Adoring the name - acknowledging the Adorable nature of God in our thought and action - is communion. It is what wakes us up to God's loving nature. It feeds us with our daily Bread of Life. And it is this Grace that gives us our daily (moment by moment) living experience of God. And this experience of God, Love, feeds all our deepest needs. Actively reflecting His Love, by feeding the famished needs of others, is our purest form of adoration.

Cause:
"Thy kingdom come."
Thy kingdom is come; Thou art everpresent.

Effect:
"Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors."
And Love is reflected in love.

God's kingdom is already come. It feels like we're moving through time and space to see and find solutions to problems, to demonstrate what's true, or even to find forgiveness. But God's perfect solution - His kingdom - is already come. It is always just an "awakening away" from being conscious within us.

Dreaming, it all seems like a process to go through. But Truth is the alarm clock. And Life insists on being lived. And Love stirs us to wake up. And this awakening reveals who we really are as God's perfect child: already safe, our needs already met, forgiveness already fulfilled by reflection: living our love of Love, His kingdom everpresent in our heart. Here. Now.

Cause:
"Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven"
Enable us to know, as in heaven, so on earth God is omnipotent, supreme.

Effect:
"And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil."
And God leadeth us not into temptation but delivereth us from sin, disease, and death.

God's will is effortless. He has no opposition. God is all power. And that means His will actually is done in earth exactly as it is already done in heaven. What's more, we are enabled to actually know this, to experience God's good will for us here and now.

And we can be completely confident that His will for us is never evil. His will for us never includes temptations or trails or sin, disease or death. Why? Because "God is Love." His Love meets us right where we think we are (earth) as it is where we really are (in heaven). His omnipotent loving will for us is simply the awakening that we everpresent with Him. Always have been. Are now. And always will be.

And how is all this possible?

"For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever."

For God is infinite, all power, all Life, Truth, Love, over all, and All.

The joy of the Lord's Prayer

We are so glad that You are our Father which art in heaven.
We are so glad that you are our Father-Mother God, Good, already all-harmonious!

We are so happy to hallow Your name, to recognize Your complete and perfect loving nature as the Adorable One.

We so much want Your kingdom within us to come alive!
We are so amazingly glad that Your kingdom - Your presence - really is already come; that in fact, You are already here, with us, right now. And it is a great place to be!

We so so so much yearn to see Your will done in earth as it is already done in Heaven.
We are so glad that You enable us to know that, as in Heaven, so in earth - right where we are - You are already omnipotent, supreme.

And we are so hungry for our daily communion with You, the Bread of Life that you give us!
We are so grateful for the grace You give us today, for the famished affections You feed - and cause us to feed as Your reflection.

And thank You for forgiving us our debts - as we forgive our debtors.
How grateful we are that Your forgiving Love is reflected in our loving to forgive.

Oh and yes! Lead us! and You never lead us into temptation or firery trials. So we thank You for always delivering us from evil - from sin, disease, death - from every claim of that original lie that we, Your reflection, could ever be separated from You.

And how is all this possible?

Because You are the only Presence, and the only Power, and the only Glory there ever is, forever. Because You are already infinite, all the power there is right here, all Life, Truth, Love there is right now. You are over all. In fact, Father-Mother, You are All.

Hallelujah!

Why God?

Who will always feed you?
Who will always forgive you?
Who will always lead you away from danger?
Who will always deliver you from evil?

Only someone who truly loves you.

If you knew someone like that, and you were afraid, or needed something urgently, or just wanted to sit quietly with someone, wouldn't you want to go to them? Wouldn't you look forward to spending time with them? Wouldn't you love just being with them?

But how often do you listen to everyone except God! How often do you let the media tell you who you are or aren't. Or how often you believe what other people tell you about yourself. Or maybe you let the past - or your fear of the future - define you!

So try something different. Try listening to what God, Love, is saying about you. Listen to the Lord's Prayer.

Jesus shows us through the Lord's Prayer why you should listen to Someone who truly and completely loves you, why you should listen to God:

* God cares for you deeply and individually. Your Father-Mother God knows you by name.

* His nature is completely Good. God's relationship with you is priceless, sacred, enduring, adorable.

* God's unconditional love is present with you here and now.

* Every wonderfully perfect and inspiring and challenging and fun - heavenly - condition is God's only will for you.

* God knows your need before you ask Him. He supplies your daily needs, in both practical and spiritual ways. And your only need really is for Grace for today, feeding all famished affections.

* The Love you feel from God awakens your love for others. You discover forgiveness as a power that breaks the dreams of lack and doubt and enemies.

* And that Love leads you away from away from the trials of a personal ego and its junk food tempations. Because divine Love gives you a different perspective. Love shows you that you deserve something much better. Love delivers you into discovering your wholeness, your healthiness, your holiness as His likeness.

And how does God, Love do this?

Because God is already present with you. God is always the only real power there is. And God, Love, already includes you as His completely satisfied image and likeness. Right here where you are already. Right now.

So look outward and upward!

Look at all you have to give.
Look at all you have to live.
Give your gifts of love without fear or hesitation.
God has given them to you for a reason.

And the reason is this:

You are His gift, His blessing, to the world.

Why the Lord's Prayer heals

"For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever."
For God is infinite, all-power, all Life, Truth, Love, over all, and All.

Everything that has gone before, every profound statement of Truth, every verse, every word of the Lord's Prayer is powered by this final declaration.

God's name and nature are hallowed, God's presence is confirmed, God's will is declared by this verse. The reason God feeds us, forgives us, leads and delivers us is explained by this verse. This is a clear statement of God's complete dominion over you and the universe. It is laid down as the law governing you and every situation you - or anyone or anything - will ever encounter. This verse is the reason the Lord's Prayer meets every human need. This is the reason the Lord's Prayer heals.

Over the course of many months I have changed from just saying the Lord's Prayer to really praying the Lord's Prayer. I have come to understand that the Lord's Prayer fulfills the 10 Commandments - the 10 Promises - that outline exactly who we are as God's image and likeness. I love discovering the symmetry of how verses 2 - 4 are the reasons verses 5 - 7 are possible. I love how the Lord's Prayer is all about our real relationship with God, about how this prayer creates an openness - a hospitality - to our Father-Mother, to accept Him, adore Him, recognize His presence and His power superceding every thought of "something else", of separation.

So I especially love how the Lord's Prayer affirms our unity with God - as our Father, as our Mother. And only as we understand that can we even know Who we are praying to, who we are trusting our desires to! And then (and only then) can we actually ask for what we need and be confident in getting a healing answer.

And what does Jesus show us we need? Our daily bread - our daily communion, our daily experience - of God, the Adorable One. An experience of His grace feeding all the hungerings we have. His awakening Love forgiving us, reflected in our love of forgiving ourselves and others. His sure leading - never into evil - but always delivering us from sin, disease, death - from any sense of separation from Him.

And how is all this possible?

"For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever."
For God is infinite, all-power, all Life, Truth, Love, over all, and All.

That's why. That's the law overturning every counterclaim of us being separated from God. That is what changes our perception of what is real and true. That is what subordinates what we humanly think is true and real for what God actually declares is true and real.

He owns it all! His is the kingdom. His is the power. And His is the glory.

And what's more: our rightful place is in His kingdom, His presence. Our confidence is in His almighty all-Loving power. And when our heart and soul and mind are at home with Him, we cannot experience anything less than His glory.

This is why the Lord's Prayer meets all human needs.

And this is why the Lord's Prayer heals.