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.