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.

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.

Being delivered by recognizing Christ

To recognize a song, you have to have heard it before.

To recognize a face, you have to have seen it before.

To recognize Christ, means you already have a relationship to the Christ. Christ in already your heart.

And what is amazing, is that everyone is already capable of recognizing the Christ, no matter who they are, or what kind of life they've led. Everyone has an intuitive sense that awakens when you recognize something spiritually good. And that can only happen because the Christ is already within you, already known in your heart-of-hearts.

When Mary Magdalene (see Luke 7) barged univited into Simon the Pharisee's house to wash Jesus feet with her tears, dry them with her hair, and anoint them with perfumed ointment, she was proving this very thing. She recognized the Christ because that Christliness was already within her. Had that not been the case, she would have never acted like she did. Fear or shame or ignorance would have kept her out. But her impulsive actions acknowledged something that even the priestly Simon couldn't: that Jesus was the Christ. Mary knew it.

Her devotion and love of Christ was "Love being reflected in love" - her debts, her sins, being forgiven - forsaken - in the awakening of her native state, her original Christliness, her natural likeness to God. The tears she shed were her painful past being released in the joy of her awakening to her true relation to God. And she received the blessing that Simon missed, because "she loved much" because much was forgiven her. While Simon clung to his pride and position, Mary dropped her mistaken sense of self (ego) in her love for the Christ.

She entered that house - not as the prostitute (though that is all Simon saw) - but as the daughter of God. And to paraphrase Mrs. Eddy: "Jesus beheld in Science the perfect [woman], who appeared to him where sinning mortal [woman] appeared to [Simon]. In this perfect [woman] the Saviour saw God's own likeness, and this correct [Christly] view of [her healed and sealed her own Christly awakening].

Mary Magdalene continued to sit at Jesus feet the rest of her life. That was her true life purpose. She recognized the Christ because it was already within her, and she went on to live and to learn and to love much.

This Christ is also already within you. Right this moment. May you seek"...Truth, Christ ... like Mary Magdalene, from the summit of devout consecration, with the oil of gladness and the perfume of gratitude, with tears of repentance and with those hairs all numbered by the Father.

And may you recognize your own Christliness, be awakened by it, redeemed by it, changed by it, impelled by it, and in so doing, awaken that Christly recognition in everyone you meet.