In God We, uh, Trust Who among us dares start each day with no more prayer than this: I know I don’t need to ask for anything, because whatever is Your Will for this day must be right for me. How we would like to have that confidence, but instead we wrestle endlessly against each day, struggling to shape it to our preconceived specifications, to force it to evolve according to our desires, to ensure one occurrence or preclude another, and just as endlessly we seek to enlist God in this effort. Of course, in our hearts, we know God is worthy of our trust and will do the right thing, but still, when alone in prayer, we cannot stop ourselves from giving God daily instructions, what to make happen and what to prevent. And yet, all the Teachers agree that, despite our haunting perception to the contrary, God really does know our needs and can be blindly depended upon to fill them. Be not afraid, they all tell us, repeatedly. Trust life. Thus, in a favorite lesson echoed in the scriptures of countless other spiritual traditions, Jesus teaches,
So, let’s do so –
let’s consider the lilies. Just how do they grow? The answer is, they
simply grow. That is, however their lives unfold, they live them, and
to the extent they think about them at all, they recognize that whatever
occurs, Now, on the other hand, consider the humans, and how we grow. In a word, we whine. We interpret our relationship with our lives to be one of antagonists, and we are therefore endlessly at odds with them. Worse, we view our lives as a sentence, a punishment, decreed upon us by an angry, vengeful God, and we live them in that spirit, with the inevitable result that much of the time we are miserable. Is it any wonder our coffee tables are stacked with books, and our schedules with workshops, instructing us how to escape? Lilies do not read such books, or attend such workshops. In fact, they would be amused, if not appalled, to learn of their existence. With all this, it seems the only significant difference between us is, the lilies of the field know that God loves them, and we do not. Perhaps, instead of praying Fix my life, you and I should be praying, Teach me to love You; teach me to trust You; teach me to trust my life.
Amen |
|
For I am the first and the last. From The Nag Hammadi
Library |
In your light I learn
to love. In every event, the entire universe is reflected. Sri Nisargadatta
God
did not create the devil. Why do you keep asking
for a faster Way? |
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