Month: October 2017

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Love and Faith

I rescued a locust yesterday, on its back on the deck and I thought it was dead. But I picked it up and it gripped my finger…I put it on a branch and all of a sudden, a whir of wings and gone! Yay! That was joy. I was thinking ahead as I was writing this, thinking, what happened? And quick the answer: Love happened. Aha. Yes. So, it’s Love, then, that heals? Not faith?

Love is the engine. Faith is the caboose. Faith seems to fail when it tries to drive without Love. Love energizes Faith. Think of it like this–

Lord, I can’t think. Mikey is crying, and I just had him out.

Listen and look with Love. What does he need?

I think he needs my attention. And breakfast.

So, faith without love would say to ignore him and keep bending over the page, waiting for some mystical revelation. What does love say?

Love says, stroke his ears and get up and feed him, which is what I am going to do…Ok, I’m back.

And what happened?

Well, he’s eating. He’s content.

And here you are, with Me, quiet again. Love undergirds your entire life, when you are living fully connected to Me. While Quiet helps you focus, you were not disconnected when you made the choice to pause and tend to his needs. Look how many examples there are of Jesus leaving His quiet time and place to serve the needs of the crowd. You need both. You need time devoted here, yes. But you can’t LIVE here, on the page. This time is meant to empower you for the rest of your day, where you live in community with others. This time is meant to fill you so your love can overflow. That’s what I mean by faith is the caboose. Faith is Love’s bridge in the world. Faith connects others to Me through your Love.

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Growth in Heaven

Lord, I want to know about heaven. Do we still grow, there? I mean, we are somehow ageless, but do we still grow?

With every human born, heaven grows. “Heaven” in the collective grows in its capacity to love and care, just as an earthly family does when a new baby is born. Do you think brilliant ideas are limited to earth only? Do you think creativity dies when eternity begins? There is much you cannot understand or conceive until you arrive. But know this: Heaven is a shorthand word for Life. And where there is life, there is growth.

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List What You Love

I have some time-space in my days. What should I be doing? I keep putting on the brakes and trying to accelerate simultaneously. All this does is rev the engine, waste gas, and create a rut! Or should I just put it in park, take it out of gear? That’s a choice.

What time did I say it is?

You said not to ever doubt my purpose. And when the tide turns…which to me implies the light changing and time to take the foot off the brake, or the car out of park.

You can take your foot off the brake and coast, or drift. That is not the same as driving. And you need to steer as you drive. You need to stay on course. Stay on your main road. This isn’t a race. This is a journey. This is a road trip. You love adventure, you love new places, you love new experiences. You’ve been putting the brakes—for a long time—on what you love. You’re afraid you will only be disappointed. Why don’t you list what you love, starting with close to home.

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Creative Inspiration

If Your mercies are new every morning, are there words for each day? Fresh bread, every morning? I have been—again—reluctant to “wish.” What if I wish amiss?

 

Think of wishes like this. Imagine for a minute you had a patron, one with unlimited resources, not only of funds, but of Time. Of energy and health. With the contacts to open easily any door of opportunity. Imagine that patron just met with a shy but very gifted pianist and that together they talked music, talked about a small outdoor concert and an open-air innovative recording studio to combine nature’s music—as it occurred in real time—with the piano. The pianist leaves inspired and encouraged to make the music Heaven always intended that she make. Your eyes meet; hers are shining.

Now it’s your turn. And others will come talk to Me after you do. And you will return—later today, tomorrow, the next day—and together we will refine and shape and polish and fulfill and add to and create new. And so will I with all these others. So tell Me, your Patron: what do you dream?

Do you have a story for me? For me to tell, I mean?

I do. I have many more stories for you.

You do?

See, you’re smiling. Your eyes are shining. You’re letting yourself imagine, a little. I want you to imagine a lot. This is how our partnership works. I inspire—then you, with My help, synthesize and bring into form. Then you share with the larger world.

You have forgotten a middle crucial step in breathing. You breathe in. Then, that oxygen—and spiritually, My Spirit—fills every part of your body, your life. It energizes, enriches, enables movement. Then, you breathe out—you release that oxygen, that inspiration, now transformed and in a form that blesses others, just as carbon dioxide enriches the trees and plants. See how connected it all is? Let the oxygen fill you first.

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Growth

You know, God, I have so much. That seems to have turned into a block of sorts. How can I imagine more? How can I “wish” or reach for more? I know the kinds of miraculous provision You supply. What gives me the right to put myself standing in that line again?

 

Because as you grow, you require “more” in order for that growth to continue. Children cannot wear last year’s shoes. A high-schooler cannot use his third grade bat and glove. Trikes give way to training wheels and then bicycles—and eventually to cars. It’s not selfish; it’s the natural order.

But, Lord, isn’t there a point where growth stops? Where you start diminishing, sliding backwards?

 Not diminishing as much as shedding—ready to transform. You are not yet in that place—in fact, you are nowhere near that place, in your own life’s journey. So let’s engage in some “wishful thinking.” Go ahead. What would you be? What would you do? What would you have? Just play a little. Please. I can’t reveal, if you “can’t imagine.”

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Connection

Lord, what would You say? Come to the silence, quiet my chatter, that is what these morning pages are supposed to help me do. Inner knowing to me means hearing from You. It means receiving when I don’t know.

You don’t follow Me by rote—You follow Me instead by “wrote”—by My word made real to you, spoken to you. I have never spoken fear to you. So don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid of displeasing Me. You want, you seek, to make something tangible, something to help communicate and reinforce My presence with you, and with others with you, to help spark their faith in My goodness and My power to heal and restore—and My willingness to do so. The ingredients you are choosing connect you to the idea (and ideal) of connectedness to all living beings, and to living in peace.

You are making a new oil—an Oil of Peace. Your life of connection is peace, is a life of peace. Love is the bond of peace for you—and for Me. Under your Tree of Life are all the four-footeds, and the wingeds rest in that Tree’s branches, all at Peace. Eve’s Eden indeed.

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The Sower’s Seed

So God, how does Your Resurrection affect daily decisions?

It takes the weight and burden out of the fear of making “the wrong decision.” What if you knew it was impossible for you to make a “wrong” decision? What if you interpreted “all things work together for good” that way? What if you saw your life–your daily life–as a continual unfolding of blessing–for you and everyone around you, everyone you come in contact with? What if you lived as though you really, literally, are a magnet of and for love and blessing, for peace, and for prosperity? A magnet of blessing in your world, magnetizing blessing to yourself and to everyone around you? Why don’t you try living “as if”–suspend all your disbelief, and live “as if” all this were true? Because it is. It is true. But your fears and worries blind you.

There is nothing wrong with the Sower’s seed. The seed is abundant and holds within itself all the power it needs to grow and multiply into an abundant crop of even more seeds. It needs good, deep soil, and water. That is your job. “Weed and feed.” That is your job. You are trying to find seeds and plant seeds; no–that is the Sower’s work. Your work is to weed and feed.

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Divinity and Humanity

Lord, do You still experience human emotions? I never thought about that before. Are You still, so to speak, the God-Man, Jesus Christ: Or—in other words, are You still Jesus? Lord of All…but still Jesus?

The reason Thomas could put his hand in My side, and his finger in the nail-wounds in My hands is because I Am “still” Jesus. Glorified, Risen, but still and always Myself. So yes—I Am still weeping over My Jerusalem—over My world. And yes, I Am still seething over the money-changers and over the Pharisees within My own church, and yes, I Am still rejoicing over every single lost lamb brought back into the fold. I Am still the Door of the sheep, I Am still the Good Shepherd watching over the flock, I Am still the Light of the World. I Am not a helpless, dependent infant, and the day of My handing Myself over to the world’s authorities is past—but I Am still risen in My humanity. I still weep with those who weep, and rejoice with those who rejoice. I will never stop being Who I Am.

So when I am afraid…or worried…

I share your fears. Not to give power to them but to transform them—and you. That is the real message behind Flawless. There is nothing I can’t overcome.

Lord, can You—would You—overcome disease? Can You—would You—overcome fear? Overcome depression and lethargy? There is brilliant beautiful sudden light!

I have already overcome. Focus on My Resurrection. The reason for the Cross was to get to Resurrection, to set the stage for it. I needed to become the Overcomer—for your sakes, all of you. You all still struggle with receiving. I Am not defeated, I Am Alive, Risen, Triumphant, and I Am calling you, all of you, to live in the power of My Rising.

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God’s Gratitude List

What in the world would You say, today?

As a parent, you want–I want–the best for our children.

Yes. And…? But…?

No “and.” What can you add to “the best”? No “but”–no exceptions. What is hurting your heart today is fear.

Ok, Lord. It’s hard, though. It’s really hard. Fear makes people do crazy things.

That is why I want you to “be not afraid.” That’s why I want you to focus on Love.

So, God, do You have a message for me to share today? A third way kind of message? I can barely hear You through my sorrow.

Your world is not hopeless, nor is it helpless, although it seems that way to you right now. I have called you to love mercy and to walk open-hearted with Me. When John the Baptist was murdered, I needed some time alone, some time to commune with My Father, some time to receive new strength to meet the needs of the hour. You need that, too–you, as a person and the larger “you” of community and nation. Mostly you need to hear that Hope and Love are not foolish, though they seem so to you now. You try to make Gratitude Lists, even through your tears. Would it surprise you to know I have a Gratitude List, too? Would you like to know some of My Gratitudes for today?

I, God, Am Grateful for loving hearts that struggle to find goodness when all around them seems to be falling apart.

I, God, Am Grateful for anyone, everyone, willing to engage in listening to those with opposite points of view in order to reach common ground and build a better tomorrow.

I, God, Am Grateful for every act of brave kindness, from those who sheltered others in Las Vegas to those who stand up to bullying on the playground.

I, God, Am Grateful every time any person shifts to a loving, peace-centered world view, and seeks to implement that shift in their own relationships with their families, their friends, and strangers they encounter day-to-day.

And I, God, Am Grateful for you–and millions more like you–who get discouraged but never give up on Love as the Way.

Keep shining. Your world needs rainbows through its tears. Keep the Light on.

 

 

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Choosing Love Over Violence

I am sitting outside, in the swing, wanting the feel and sounds of the outdoors. We now have a new “the worst mass shooting” in our national history. Here is what I know: it’s not You. It’s no part You. I don’t know how to pray, what to say to make sense out of madness.

Imagine a father with a family feud–that is easy for you to imagine; you live there. And you see how it affects him, day to day. You see how his heart aches and how he tries to just go on despite it, throwing himself into his work, having given up on trying to broker any peace. The difference is, I can’t–won’t–ever give up. So as long as there is one war, one fight, one enemy, I, God, carry within Myself both unutterable grief and boundless joy and hope–joy over, as your Bible puts it–“one sinner who repents”–which really means, one person coming home to his or her best self, one person laying down hate and choosing to love, or at least, to learn to love. This is the duality people sometimes sense within Me, and try to explain through words like Light and Dark or Yin and Yang. The unity in the duality is Love. Because I Am Love, I hold both grief and joy at the same time, and because I Am Love, I Am always ready to show mercy.

Lord, it feels hopeless. Like “they” are never going to agree. It is such a beautiful day, here. And such a horrible, terrible day, there.

I have promised never to destroy your world. That doesn’t mean humanity won’t. You have to decide what side you are on–the side of mercy and hope and love and peace, or the side of vengeance and hatred and fear and violence.

Lord, You know my choice is for love and peace.

Is it? Where are you focused right now?

So how can I make a difference, make a stand?

By looking for concrete ways to show My Love, to speak My Love, to every hurting and searching heart you encounter. By affirming all you know about My Father-God heart. By calling people everywhere to lay down the weapons in their minds, the judgment, the retaliation, the name-calling, the bigotry, the envy, the violence in their thoughts and words. Every violent act begins with violent thoughts and words. Change the conversation. Change the vocabulary. Start in your own mind, your own thought, and spread the ripples outward from there. Sound the trumpet-call to Love.