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.

Temptation and desire ...and prayer

"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.

"Our Master said, 'After this manner pray ye' and then he gave that prayer which covers all human needs." That prayer is the Lord's Prayer.

What Jesus is telling us is, after this manner therefore express your desires. Put your deepest yearning into these words. Phrase your honest needs this way.

Your yearning, your desires, are a form of prayer itself, probably the most honest form of prayer. And the answer to your every prayer is found here in the meaning -the spirit - of the Lord's Prayer.

Mrs. Eddy wrote: "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."

Does that mean you can trust only your holiest desires to God? Or does it also mean you can actually trust all of your desires, all of your genuine honest heartfelt, soul-felt and yes, body-felt, desires to God? Yes, it does.

Mrs. Eddy makes another astute observation: "Honesty is spiritual power. Dishonesty is human weakness, which forfeits divine help." She also writes: "We should examine ourselves and learn what is the affection and purpose of the heart, for in this way only can we learn what we honestly are."

The best place to start your prayer is by examining - and honestly acknowledging - your real desires. Not the desires you think you should have. Not the ones that other people think are good for you. Not the ones society as a whole preaches about. But yours. What you feel deeply and sincerely - good, bad, or indifferent!

And oh everyone - including you - is "praying" this way all the time! It's just that most people never realize that what they're cherising in their heart, what they're desiring, what they're focusing on, is actually a prayer.

And what everyone - including you - usually forget to do, is to actually trust God with those desires. Instead, you trust your desire to the ego's self-indulgence! And then your prayer gets answered with busyness instead of Life, entertainment instead of Truth, part-time pleasures instead of Love - fantasy instead of Reality!

But that's OK. Everyone does it. Just pay more attention. Don't let the ego's little temptations lead you down its deadend roads. Instead, be aware of what you are honestly desiring in your heart. Notice it. Bring it out into the open. Don't be afraid of it. NEVER be afraid to be completely honest with yourself about your heart's true feelings! and NEVER be afraid to completely trust those feelings, those desires, those deep deep yearnings to your Father-Mother God.

And God never leads us into tempation, but always delivers us into holiness, and wholeness, and Life!

"And lead us... And deliver us..."

"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.

And God leads us...

Just stop for a minute and think about what that means.

God leads us. He's there in front showing us the way, the Good Shepherd guiding and guarding, His staff and rod at hand to comfort and to correct. His watchful eye always and only looking out for your welfare, leading you out of the dream of trials and tempatations - whatever would cause you to stray from Him - to think that you are separated, or ever could be separated, from Him.

And God delivers us...

Think: God actively, purposefully, delivers us from every evil - every lie - about our true nature, our true will, our true identity. God delivers you from whatever would cause you to stray from your true purpose, weaken your true calling, or try to kill off your true likeness to Him.

He delivers you from sin: the mistake of thinking that you can enjoy a lie.
He delivers you from sickness: the mistake of thinking that you can suffer from a lie.
He delivers you from death: the mistake of thinking that a lie can be fatal!

Jesus called Satan - evil - "a liar." A liar would trick you into believing his lie is actually the truth. But it never is. It never has any power. It can only "suggest" its lie. And therefore, it can only seem to be true (i.e., real) if you believe the lie!

But in this verse of the Lord's Prayer, Jesus awakens you to understand that you never have to be tempted to believe evil's lie. Never. Instead Jesus awakens you to the fact that God only ever leads you to, delivers you to, Truth.

And Truth is the antidote - the cure - for every lie. Truth always exposes the lie for what it is. Truth, understood, immediately annihilates the "power" of any lie, no matter how big and scary the lie seems to be - whether it calls itself sin, sickness, or death. It is still just a lie. Without power. Without reality. Without effect. Why? because sin, sickness, and death are evil. They are never from God. And so they can never survive exposure to God's Truth any more than the night can survive the sunrise.

"Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil."
And God never leads us into the temptation to believe in - or experience - any evil, any "lie," but already - right now - truly delivers us wholy, holy, healthfully, blissfully, vigorously, at-one with Life!

Awakening

All the mistakes I've made, all the people I've hurt, all the lies I've told, all the love I've taken for granted or (worse) completely neglected, all the failures to live up to what I know is right, all the bad things that have happened in my life, and even just my day today -- all this history, it is all being washed away by glimpsing that "Love is reflected in love."

To the extent I put aside my ego, the debts, the failures, the separation, the personal sense of myself and of others - of the dream - and take even just a small soulful step in awakening to what I really am as God's, Love's, likeness by being loving, to that extent forgiveness washes over me, washes me clean of the dream of being a "personal author and privileged orginator" of heart-break and hurtfulness. And that Love awakens me to intuitively sense that all real being is actually the emanation of the Great I Am, of God, of Love itself.

Ituitively I sense that Love is the only real power. Love being reflected in love, is a "law of annihilation" to everything unlike itself - to all sense of forgetting, failure, mistakes, hurtfulness, hate, malice, indebtedness, evil. And as this intuition takes hold, the light of Christ begins to dawn and the nightmare begins to disappear. I find myself begining to wake up.

Wake up to what?

To what has always been true: that Love actually is powerful and real. Good actually is the foundation of our authentic nature. We actually are capable of living out a life of love. In fact, we're more than just capable of that. We're made for it.

Forgiveness is always an awakening. Forgiveness is Love, God, kicking over our complacency and idle human do-gooding. Forgiveness demands that you snap out of it! and get your life more loving. Forgiveness shakes you up! Forgiveness makes you think about what's right and wrong, what's good and evil, and most importantly: what's a lie and what is true, what is a dream and what is reality.

Forgiveness never leaves us where it finds us. It forces us to discover what's true - both about ourselves as well as our "debtor." It requires us to repent - to re-think - about what we assume is our perfect little lily-white life.

And in that cold sometimes uncomfortable self-examination, we must become humble before God. We realize that our personal sense of love - of being a nice forgiving person, a self-sacrificing little human, or even a stubborn old goat - that we can of ourselves do nothing. Our words of forgiveness may be well-intentioned but too often are hollow and self-serving. And they alone cannot right any wrong. They cannot heal the hurt.

And so you may find that only on your knees do you finally wake up.

And forgiveness is always an awakening. Awakening from what? From the dream of many big egos and little minds, of good and evil, of separation from God, divine Love itself.

And what does this awake you to?

To the only thing that really matters: Love is All-in-all.

Forgiveness forces you to reconsider everything so that you can wake up to the fact that Love really is actually All-in-all. Your debt to others - and your so-called debtors' debts to you - cannot survive this awakening. Why? because Love forces you to confront your true nature: that you are just like God: loving. And your debtor's true nature? Yes. Also just like God: loving.

And it is this awakening that annihilates the dream of good and evil, of separation, of personal egos in debt. And by accepting this awakening - actually living out loud the love that forgiveness requires in your thinking and in your daily life - true forgiveness happens. In fact, spiritually speaking, the only thing anyone ever really "owes" - is in debt for - is to love.

Living as Love's, God's, loving reflection, is completely natural for you. In fact, it is (believe it or not) your only authentic state of being and (believe it or not again!) the only authentic being of everyone around you. Love is the only real state of being there is. Love is always reflected in love. Feel it. Accept it. Act on it. This is the practice. Get busy.

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

Give us this day our daily Communion

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

At even ye shall eat flesh, and in the morning ye shall be filled with bread; and ye shall know that I am the LORD your God.

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.

In this simplicity, and with such fidelity, we see Jesus ministering to the spiritual needs of all who placed themselves under his care, always leading them into the divine order, under the sway of his own perfect understanding.... To the students whom he had chosen, his immortal teaching was the bread of Life.

Give us this day our daily bread, our daily communion with God, our daily companioning with God.

But to accept this bread, this communion, this companioning, you have to come home to God, enter the house - the consciousness - of God. How? The Bible says "Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name.

So this is how you enter the house of God: through gratitude. And what is true gratitude if not the conscious acknowledgement of the true nature of God as omnipresent Good? How do you know that God is Good? Because God gives us the gift of grace - "he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust." You don't earn God's love. God is just Good, universal Good, unconditional Good. You don't have to beg for the bread at His table. It is His 24/7 gift.

Recognizing this opens your thought to actually accepting His gift, to accepting what God really is, what His nature really is: all-harmonious, infinite good, divine Love. This is "Hallowed be Thy name" kind of thinking. This is adoring the Adorable One. And adoring is effortlessly lovingly hanging on every Word of God, is acknowledging Him, is entering into His courts with thanksgiving.

And what do you find there?

Your Father-Mother God's table set, your daily bread - specific to your daily needs - set for you. This is God's gift of "grace for today" feeding your famished affections - and calling on you to feed the famished affections of your neighbor. And maybe even the world.

You can always sit down with God. You don't have to earn it. You don't have to dress a certain way or say certain things or even believe certain things. And you certainly don't have to be "perfect". You just have to be willing.

Come to God as the disciples did to Jesus, after his resurrection, at their morning meal beside the Sea of Galilee.

There, they left their fishing nets, came ashore, broke bread and communed together with their risen Master. What an astonishing experience it was for them (see John's gospel and Science and Health). His ascending thought raised them out of grief and disbelief, forgave their fears and failures, awakened them to their true purpose, and so fed their real hunger - not just with bread and fish, but with the overflowing awakening here and now that God is Love.

This communion was also their companioning with Christ, with that True Bread which comes down from Heaven. So this too is how you commune with God: by leaving your nets - your tangled obligations, thinking you always have to fend for yourself, letting go of your burdensome duties, all those things that nag you and snag you and drag you into ways of the world. Christ calls you to leave all that. Christ calls you to sit in humble grateful adoration, letting divine Life and Love feed you, forgive you, lead you, deliver you.

In fact, Christ is calling you right now to give up your daily distractions for your daily Bread.

So sit still a moment. Open your thought up with gratitude. Let yourself enter that sacred space in your heart where God is. Let Him give you your daily bread, your daily grace, your daily communion, your daily companioning - your daily oneness with divine Love. Let "this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:"

As you do, you will wake up to see that divine Love is always with you. You have never been empty, never been famished, never been alone, never separated from God - but always only ever at one with Him, your perfect Mind, always welcomed and seated at His table, communing, companioning with "Our Father which art in heaven" - with our Father-Mother God, all-harmonious, forever.

So yes Father, give us this day our daily bread, our daily communion, our daily companioning with You. Give us that beautiful gift of Love's saving grace for today. Let it feed our famished affections, and help us share Your Love to feed the famished affections of those around us.

Obeying his precious precepts,--following his demonstration so far as we apprehend it,--we drink of his cup, partake of his bread, are baptized with his purity; and at last we shall rest, sit down with him, in a full understanding of the divine Principle which triumphs over death.

My Father giveth you the true bread from heaven.

Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift.

Give us this day our daily Grace: Seeing what Love has prepared for you

Some years ago I’m driving my old 1968 VW camper bus with my friend Scot up to visit his grandpa on his homestead along the Wind River in Wyoming. My VW has a habit of occasionally eating its fan belt, so I always carry a couple spares. I am between jobs so I figure it’s cheaper replacing the fan belts than repairing the problem.

Scot and I’ve been driving non-stop for hours now across the vast lonely open spaces of eastern Oregon when suddenly the VW’s warning lights come on. It ate a fan belt. We pull over, open the engine hatch, I pop on another, and we’re on our way.

A half hour later the warning lights come on again! What?! Another fan belt’s gone. I know I have one more, so I fix it. But now I’m nervous. We haven’t passed a town or a gas station for a long time and the idea of being stuck without help and maybe missing out on visiting Grandpa is disconcerting to say the least.

I’m thinking “well, if it’s right to see Grandpa, it’ll work out.” But it’s Wednesday night and Scot suggests that we have our own little testimony meeting (as is common in Christian Science churches) and so we do. I’m reluctant at first, but Scot starts off and soon we’re sharing things we’re grateful to God for and my anxiety lessens dramatically.

Until the dashboard lights up again.

We’ve burned through 3 fan belts in the space of 60 miles. Plus now there are mysterious metal shavings coming off the pulley. Ugh. I rummage around anxiously and – find one last spare fan belt. It feels like a minor miracle.

We put it on, get back in the VW, and both of us start to pray.

Praying trusts our deepest desires to God. It turns us away from the fatalistic resignation of “if it’s right, it’ll work out” kind of thinking. Knowing that God is Love and that Love is power helps us let go of fear, let’s us become still, let’s us see the solution – the salvation – Divine Love has already prepared for us.

And that’s exactly what happens to Scot and me. Praying lets me glimpse that if God really is Love, and if God really is power, and if God is really actively present in our lives, then I can be a witness to that. I cling to this idea. You could say I “stand still” on it, because it is a solid Biblical truth. Not an “if it’s right it’ll work out” kind of thing. No. Solid. It helps me actively look and see what Love has prepared for us, right here and right now. That’s all I need to do, just see what Divine Love has prepared for us.

What a wonderful feeling that is, to know that my job right now is just to be a witness of what Love has already prepared for us. It’s actually fun to think about - because you know it has to be good. Mrs. Eddy – whose life was full of such witnessing, wrote: “Each successive stage of experience unfolds new views of divine goodness and love.” And so it is about to be proven.

So we drive on. And on. And in the growing twilight we see some buildings up ahead. We’re on the outskirts of Boise already! And there, just off the road is… a VW dealership!

It’s almost 9pm now and we figure we can just pull in there, sleep in our bus for the night, and wait until morning to get help. But then we notice that the back door of the building is open. I start to worry “what if no one’s there” or “what if someone is there, but they don’t want to help us.” Then I remember, no! Let's just see what Love has prepared for us.

So we park and walk through the open door. There are five mechanics busily putting things away and cleaning up and obviously getting ready to leave. I start to worry again about burdening them with our problems but then remember again “just to see what Love has prepared” and I hear myself asking “Can you help us?”

One of the mechanics comes over, wiping his hands off on a red shop rag, he asks us what’s the problem. We tell him the story, how we’re on our way to visit Scot’s grandpa, how the VW ate three fan belts and now there are these metal shavings and we weren’t sure why. He comes out to our VW bus and looks at the engine. Then quietly goes back inside and starts looking through a junk box. My mind is filling again with “what if he can’t find what we need” and then immediately I go back to that solid thought of just trusting that God is present, blessing all of us, that we can see what Love has prepared.

He pulls out a pulley wheel and rummages around some more and – in the midst of this big box of all kinds of junk – finds a tiny shim, the missing little piece of metal that wedges the pulley wheel correctly in place. Then he looks around under a shop bench, finds a box of fan belts and pulls out one that had come off an old Chevy. “This’ll fit” he says, then goes back out to our VW and installs everything, sliding in the missing shim, torquing the pulley bolt correctly, and putting on the belt just right.

Then the worrying thoughts start to come back again: We hardly have any money. How much is this going to cost? How am I going to pay for this? But I stop. And then I go back in my heart, remembering to just stop being afraid and see what Love has prepared. He looks up at us and says “That oughta do it” and I ask him how much we owe him, and he says “Nothing. Just go have a good visit with your grandpa.”

Maybe all of twenty minutes have passed and, after shaking his hand and thanking him profusely, we are back on the road to Wyoming – rejoicing to be witnesses to the wonderful kindness that Love had prepared for us.

I’ve leaned on this lesson many times since that trip. And it has made me realize how important it is not to resign my thinking to fatalism, to the “if it’s right, it’ll work out” kind of wishful thinking that has nothing to do with the way Jesus taught us to pray and rely on God. Jesus taught us to silence that kind of wishywashy fearful approach. He taught us instead actively pray, to be expectant that God's goodness for us is present, to leave fear behind, to stand still with Love, and then go to that place inside where we can see the salvation of the Lord – where we can feel ourselves being an active witness to what Love – not fear, or fate, or history, or circumstances - has prepared for us.

Mrs. Eddy wrote: “Immortal Mind is God, immortal good; in whom the Scripture saith ‘we live, and move, and have our being.’ This Mind, then, is not subject to growth, change, or diminution, but is the divine intelligence, or Principle, of all real being; holding man forever in the rhythmic round of unfolding bliss, as a living witness to and perpetual idea of inexhaustible good.” Misc. 82:28

So why give in to thinking “If it’s right it’ll work out" when God is already holding you in His arms? When you are already His “living witness to… inexhaustible good”? Divine Love has great things in store for you. Don’t be afraid. Listen to the intuition that guides you to trust in God. Silence the fear and stand with your thoughts still and focused on witnessing divine Love in action. This is seeing the salvation of the Lord. This is receiving your daily bread - your daily grace. This makes your life a great adventure of giving as well as receiving Love’s blessings.

Oh, and by the way, Scot and I had a great time at Grandpa’s ranch, a safe drive home, and my VW bus never ate a fan belt again.

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