dailydatewithgod

The miracle of how God works in our lives comes in the simplicity of showing up.  “Here I am Lord, show me what to do and use me as you will.”  Sounds simple, right? As usual with spiritual concepts it is simple. We just like to complicate it. We seem to think that we need to create all the right circumstances and be the right person with the outline of how it is all supposed to go.  But then we are trying to do God’s job.  If we believe that there is a God that has our back, that whatever happens we can learn and grow in love because of it, then whatever happens we cannot be harmed.  It is a risk but as I grow closer and closer to God and spend more time on our dates, I become more willing.  More willing to trust, to show up and be seen and take action, and most importantly more willing to take a chance on love. My prayer for us today is that we have one moment when we are willing to show up and take a chance on love.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

The more I learn to love from a genuine place in my heart, the more I amazed at the power of God and am humbled by my lack of power.  Love calls us to stretch beyond what we think we are capable of and live in a space of constant communion with the Divine.  I am clear that in order to love I need to be connected to the Source of Love.  It is not something I can do of my own accord.  Love is a daily choice. Love is a moment to moment choice and each time I choose it, I am that much more connected to my greatest self.  I am grateful for the countless opportunities that I get throughout the day to choose.  And the thing that blows me away more than anything is in those moments when I don’t choose love because I am fearful or focusing on me and what I will get out of a situation, God does not love me any less.  Honestly this makes no sense to my rational finite mind.  In my mind there is a limit, there is a boundary, there is an end point from which one cannot return.  I guess it is a good thing that God is Infinite.  For God there is no limit to the amount of love.  God simply invites us to choose love because God knows that it expands our experience of life, but our choice will not change that God is love.  Our choice will not cause God to love us less because God does not change based on what we do or don’t do.  God wants us to choose love because it is who we are too and more than anything God wants to be one with us as often as possible.  I heard once Love is just love.  Well God is just God and I believe that God is love.  The question remains, who would I be if I chose to believe down to the core of who I am that I was created by the very source of Love and no matter what I do I cannot change that?  I can admire all I want that God’s love is greater than what I can fathom but it is an act of courage to act as though I am part of that reality.  My prayer for us today is that we be open to acting as if we embody that from which we were created no matter what we do.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

As I grow closer in my relationship with God my sense is that God longs to hold me.  It sounds funny because God isn’t necessarily in human form, but that is sometimes how I picture it. It is an embrace of warmth and kindness, acceptance and profound love.  Sometimes I imagine that hold as a loving parent. Other times it is like a lover from behind.  Either way it conjures up an experience of intimacy and acceptance.  It is especially at times when I may not even want to hold me.  Then I know it does not come from me in my mind.  Sometimes it is not a literal hug but rather a brushing of the skin from the air that lets me know of Presence.  I have given up on trying to define God as one thing or another as God is beyond my understanding. What I do know is that if I am open to being held in a space of love my heart grows stronger and I can pass on that feeling of loving embrace to others.  My prayer for us today is that we be open to what it would mean to be held by God-literally, figuratively or otherwise.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

It has been my experience that walking a spiritual path is about continually letting go, a releasing of everything we know and understand and believe and experience.  In stands in direct contrast to the physical world which is all about possessing and getting and earning and building, etc.  It doesn’t mean that we all have to get rid of all our possessions and live as beggars do on the street, though that may be the path of some.  More often I find God calling me to be willing to release my “understanding” or ideas about an area of my life.  Letting go of old beliefs or at least being willing to look at them and determine if they are worth holding on to.  Many beliefs (which are repeated ideas) are passed on to us but we don’t stop to question if they are truly ones that resonate with who we are being today.  Its like the story of the girl who asks her mom why she cuts the ends off the ham each Christmas and her mom tells her it’s because it is what her mom did. So the daughter goes to her grandma and asks her why she did it and she says because her mom did.  Lastly the girl goes to her great-grandmother and asks why she cuts the ends off the ham for Christmas dinner each year and the great-grandmother explains that if she didn’t it would have never fit in the oven that she had.  How many ideas do we have because they were passed down by people who had smaller ovens than we have now?  My prayer for us today is that we be open to being willing to let go of an idea by questioning whether it still works for us today.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

One of the most miraculous experiences that has occurred for me as a result of my date time each morning with God is the gift of the pause that I have throughout the day.  The pause that comes between the thought and believing the thought which I take action on.  Thoughts create feelings which create actions which create habits which create character.  It may not seem like much or even something to strive for but is often the difference between peace and madness.  My life is only as beautiful as my focus and perspective allows it to be.  My view of my life is only as good as the mind-set I am in.  I can be in a wonderful place, around generous and kind people, in an experience I always dreamed of, but if my head is in the mindset of what is wrong here then that is all I am experiencing.  My thoughts then create feelings and my actions ensue from those.  The space between having a thought–good or bad, right or wrong, expected or not–and believing the thought is precious.  And if I don’t get much from questioning whether the thought is true or not, I can ask God.  My prayer for us is that we seize those pauses between thoughts, feelings and actions and have the courage to question them. Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

Life is a progression from one thing to the next.  We grow and move and live from one thing to another.  Somewhere along the line many of got the message that it was about completing tasks and getting things done.  There is a certain fatality to things.  It is understood that energy is neither created nor destroyed.  So even when things “end” they are merely being transmuted to some other energy form.  So even the notion of completion is a little bit askew.  A completion is perhaps a closure but we will take whatever skills or experiences we have had in that situation into the next one.  We use it to progress.  When the voice in my head is beating myself up for how I behaved I need to stop, say thank you for sharing and look at how I handled it in terms of an improvement from the last time. Is there any way in which I handled it a little bit better than the last time?  Is there some progress in who I was being in that situation that shows me I am growing.  Invariably the answer is yes and even if it is no, the fact that I am stopping and looking at it from a curiosity instead of condemning perspective is growth.  I cannot tell you the amount of time I have spent in my life making myself a wrong person for making what I perceived as wrong decisions.  God has shown me that nothing I can do will change who I am on a fundamental level.  Who I am is one created out of love who with every situation is finding her way more and more to the truth of who she truly is.  My prayer for us today is that we be willing to see where we are progressing.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

The world is full of beautiful sounds.  Music, nature, hearing our name, loved ones speaking to us with love, even our own voice.  There is also a beauty in the sound of stillness.  I have experienced it in my date time with God, when I am on the top of a mountain or in an early desert morning before most have woken up.  This stillness resides within us and restores balance.  God invites us to go within and find that place of stillness where we are whole and loved.  To do this we have to find time and space separate from distraction.  Sometimes it takes a while to get to the stillness when our mind keeps going but if we keep trying we will get there.  The irony of course, is that there is nowhere to get, per say, it is a matter of connecting with the Great Stillness that resides deep down within.  My prayer for us today is that we have the courage to ask God to show us how we can in the simplest of ways connect to this stillness within us.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

There seems to be this story that many of us have of perfection.  I am not sure if it is the result of watching too many movies or television where life is scripted and always works out in a given time frame or that people have a tendency not to share what is happening until the end result has been achieved.  As usual, the reason why matters little, it is about seeing life for what it really is: a process.  We do not magically go from crawling to running. We have all those steps in the middle where we stand and try to catch our balance and we fall.  We take two steps and then we get knocked over.  This is the pattern of living.  We take a chance and then sometimes we miss.  But more than likely when we stand up to walk again we remember in our minds and in our bodies how to better keep our balance. There is no failure unless, of course, we make it mean that we were not “supposed” to take that chance in the first place.  Even then, how would we know unless we actually took the chance? What we need more than anything is a new perspective on taking chances so that we see them as mis-takes.  Takes that missed the mark. Even those that are seen as “sins” come from a word that means “to miss the mark”.  So what if each time you made a mistake you were actually triumphant because you took a chance?  Then your life would be a series of triumphant mistakes.  My prayer for us today is that we be willing to try something new today and if it doesn’t work out notice the triumph.  As Marvin Phillips said,  The difference between try and triumph is just a little umph! Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

The world in which we live asks us over and over to prove ourselves.  It calls upon us to show our value and our worthiness based upon a set of standards created by the society and family in which we live.  As human beings we categorize things and placed value on them based on where they fall within those standards.  To a mind that needs things to be quickly determined for survival this is a very helpful characteristic.  In and of itself it is not bad or wrong.  However it does not translate in a spiritual understanding.  We were not designed and created by the Great Creator because we would be able to show our value.  It is because we have value that we exist.  Our worthiness is not something we need to prove to God, God does not look at things the way that we do.  The mere fact that we exist means that we are worthy.  The breath that you were given upon awakening this morning was God’s reminder that you are worthy and meant for this day, there is nothing to prove.  Being aware and present to our worthiness means recognizing that our very existence speaks of love.  The Spirit of Love that designed us placed within us the blueprint of love.  We simply need to connect with our own design and live the pattern of love from which we were generated as best as we can.  Even when we fall short, we have not failed. We cannot undo the blueprint.  Imagine what your day might be like if you spent it in the knowledge down to your bones of your worthiness and did not have to prove anything to anyone.  My prayer for us today is that with each breath that we choose to be aware of we embrace the kiss of love that reminds us of the design of our worthiness in God’s eyes.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

God sees us with such beautiful eyes that we are given experiences over and over again to take a look at ourselves.  They often show up as interactions with other people or situations where we look elsewhere to determine what is happening and why.  Ultimately, however, every experience and situation is an invitation to look inward and determine where our reaction is coming from and if it still works for us.  Carl Jung, a well-known psychologist, spoke about this on many occasions as have countless others.  We simply would not see the things we need to see about ourselves solely on our own.  So life becomes an invitation to look inward at every relationship.  There is also a great scene in the  movie “Neverending Story” where the hero in order to pass through the next challenge must come face to face with who he truly is and is warned that some of the greatest warriors have failed because they could not come to terms with who they truly are.  My prayer for us today is that we are open to facing ourselves as our true selves, in other words be willing to see ourselves as God sees us.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen