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.

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.