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!