believed that academia and academicians from any genre of study must surely hold the answers. We revere doctors and place attorneys on pedestals. We place our hope in them. Our hope for healing and our hope for justice is trusted. We trust those who will heal us and those who will deliver justice to our door. However, if our healing is not imminent, or justice becomes elusive, our hope and our trust become cynical, or we may consider justifying the outcome. Maybe we did not deserve healing or justice. Maybe we misplaced our hope and our trust.
We have placed our hope and our trust upon other human beings to be there for us with unequivocal conviction, just as we safely store our notion of God into a personal closet with that same conviction. While we must trust and hope in others in order to maintain and grow in given relationships, placing trust and hope unequivocally upon any one human being gives another an incredibly heavy burden to carry.
Just as trust is a shared intimacy, which grows in depth with time and experience, hope is a promise fulfilled as trust deepens. We are unequivocally embraced by the very Love that created us. Love waits in patience for our tired return. What more could we hope for?
“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”
Romans 15:13
Take a Moment to Listen:
Come my sweet child into waiting arms. Your return gives heaven reason to rejoice. Place your weary head upon my shoulder, for you are home, as you are here wrapped in the very space where you began.
Guided Meditation
We walk through our day -to -day lives on automatic pilot, forgetting how much we are loved and treasured by God. Forgetting that we are the beloved and as such, are embraced in every space of time that we experience.
Sit in your favorite place and close your eyes. Again, breathe deeply. Invite God to be with you. Can you feel His presence? Can you allow yourself to experience His unconditional love and endless peace? If you cannot—ask Him to help you.
Allow yourself to stay in this space of God’s love and peace. Feel yourself enveloped in His endless care. Listen as He tells you that you are His beloved child. Allow yourself to experience the sweetness of this love.
Ask God to help you remember throughout the day how loved you are. When you forget, you can ask Him again to help you remember.
Your Thoughts/Experience:
“When we are at wit’s end for an answer, then the Holy Spirit can give us an answer. But how can He give us an answer when we are still well supplied with all sorts of answers of our own?”
Karl Barth
Anyone who has had experience with tired or confused children also has experienced the bedraggled way in which they communicate wants or needs while in that emotional state.
“I’m thirsty,” they whine. “Here honey, would you like some water?” you answer hopefully. “Noooo, I don’t want thaat,” the answer comes swift and sure. Nothing you offer is acceptable, yet they are thirsty and want something, even while they’re not sure what that something is. Though they seem to believe that they know. “I want Sugar Wow, I want Sugar Wow.” Sound familiar? In much the same way we ask, “Lord, I really need you to help me with this situation,” even as we have already envisioned a dozen scenarios in which God could help that would be acceptable to us. Should, heaven forbid, the answer is not one we wanted, then we are either angry with God or ourselves or both also for reasons we have already worked out somewhere in our psyche. Much like an over-tired, or petulant child we ask or demand help from heaven, but it had better be in one of the ways that our ‘little wills’ have imaged it should arrive.
Unfortunately, like children, we are not privy to all of the ramifications of an answer that we have worked out for ourselves however, God does know and knows exactly what we need. Cynical?
The next time you need assistance ask God to help with whatever you need helped, but allow God to then do what Love does best. Try not to get in the way.
“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.”
Mark 7:7
Take a Moment to Listen:
Child of heaven, all clarity is freely given when you find yourself confused, or fearful. No holy child would be left in such a quandary in pain and alone. No ultimate love could extend such cruel neglect. Do not imagine answers in fear or discontent rather, seek the peace within you, where Heaven and Spirit await your willingness. Breathe in that holy space and know that you are loved.
Guided Meditation
We recognize the state of anxiety and of being ‘at wit’s end’, but we often do not recognize Love’s healing hand. There may be some days when feeling anxious or confused is more acceptable to us than accepting the gifts of our inheritance.
God wants to heal your heart. Whatever pain, anxiety or sadness you feel can be healed with His peace.
Find a comfortable place to relax. Close your eyes and take a deep breath. Breathe in and out deeply a few times. Focus on those breaths. See yourself by an infinite ocean. The waves rise and fold meeting the sand in rhythmic harmony. Watch the precise majesty of those waves. The salted air is pungent with spray stretching crazily toward the clouds. You are alone on this stretch of beach, but not completely. God is here with you.
Allow your heart to speak. Know that He is listening with total and complete healing peace. Allow yourself to hear His answer. Rest in that answer. Rest inside that healing peace.
Your Thoughts/Experience:
“Perhaps nothing helps us make the movement from our little selves to a larger world than remembering God in gratitude. Such a perspective puts God in view in all of life, not just in the moments when life seems easy.”
Henri Nouwen
‘Thank you’ or a derivative of such is available in any form for use by human interaction. Simple enough. Someone extends himself or herself and our response is ‘thank you’. Should someone extend himself or herself a bit more we add ‘so much’ to the end of thank you. Should the extension of kindness show itself in a grander gesture we add emotion and positive body language to our ‘thank you—so much.’ The displayed emotions, positive body language and ‘thank you—so much really’ is registered by giver and receiver in gladness. Both have given and received. Such as it is with thank you.
We are appropriately thankful upon appropriate occasion. We are at the level of appreciation. We appreciate having been appreciated, while others appreciate having been remembered. We have both given and received. We are thankful—for the moment.
While the act of exchanging thank you may resemble the state of gratitude, the pair is actually on opposite ends of a continuum. The act of saying thank you at the very beginning while the state of gratitude, deepening exponentially, as the continuum extends itself within the human experience.
Gratitude on the other end of the spectrum is where we hold our appreciation for a remembrance given, an opportunity to remember and find gratefulness when there is no remembrance at all. We are outside of our need to be remembered because we’ve stepped outside of our little wills and small selves. In deep gratitude, the rain clouds, or sun, small insects and screaming children can be experienced for their Reality.
