dailydatewithgod

One of my favorite songs is “This Little Light of Mine.”  I remember hearing and learning it as a kid and perhaps because it’s so catchy you can’t help but join in when you hear it.  One of the less known verses of the song says, “out there in the dark, I’m gonna let it shine . . .let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.”  It reminds me that it is not about how bright my light is or how remarkable the shine is or even if it shines on anything specific or important.  It’s about it being my light and me choosing to let it shine.  Within each of us is an abundance of light ready to shine when we get out of the way and stop blocking it. The light of love was placed in us by God and the purpose was for all around the world a light would shine for all to see.  When we forget ourselves in our darkness, it is others who shine their light reminding us we have it within us too.  When we notice the dark in our house, in a friend, at our job, in the car, or on-line we have light we can shine.  Darkness is simply the absence of light. When the light shines, the darkness cannot exist.  We all have our own ways of shining and God intended us that way.  It is not about seeing who or where we can shine our light.  Like a lighthouse it is about shining where we are in this moment.  Those who are drawn to our light will step right up to benefit from our shine.

As we are walking into the quieter season of nature where in the northern hemisphere things go dormant, hunker down, and get darker, hope is not a word that comes to mind easily.  It is an interesting paradox, for those of us who live in the western commercialized world,  amidst this same quiet time is the frenzy of the holiday season.  I can only speak of my experience in the United States but Christmas is believed to be celebrated all around the world.  Why else would Santa need to travel so fast to get everywhere on Christmas eve?  In the Christian tradition there is a profound experience of light being born in the world amidst the darkness and cold of winter.  The celebration of Jesus’ birth rings with signs of hope.  I find it curious that his birth would occur amidst a rough political climate in Israel and to a young pregnant girl not even certain of a room in which to birth her child.  Perhaps God is trying to demonstrate that being about hope is not about waiting for the right circumstances or even being ready.  Hope lives in a place in our hearts which encourages to keep showing up and keep moving forward despite what things look or feel like on the outside.  When we choose to be about hope it means linking ourselves to God’s vision that nothing short of a miracle can happen at any moment.  So as I face my own darkness and wonder if I will ever make it out, I can ask God to continue to bring me about-face and see the hope emerging from the very darkness I can’t imagine it residing in.

Life is full of things that catch our eye.  Most people identify themselves as visual learners.  If we did not know before, we are keenly aware now of the power of seeing things in any form, even on a screen.  With so much to focus our attention on it is hard to believe that God is still something that espies us.  God continually catches our sight because God is about fascination, mystery, aliveness, vitality, beauty, and grace.  When we are espying God we are not just caught visibly, our hearts are captured as well.  Sometimes we do not give credit for what we are espying because we chalk it up to something that is always there.  Recently I was on a flight at night and almost the entire flight I was espying the work of God in the glowing full moon which looked like it was riding the clouds with the plane.  I cannot tell you how many times I have seen the moon, but it caught my sight that night with the beauty of its glow and the closeness of its majesty.  By espying God in the beauty of the light of the moon my heart-felt full of joy and I was humbled to be able to bear witness.  Nature is a simple place to do plenty of espying on God and thankfully it is with us all the time.

God values the simple movements and gestures of our lives the same way the grand ones are valued.  They are all ways we are acting in the present moment.  We perceive some as more powerful in others in terms of their impact but we do not always know.  The world tells us that only big actions create big results.  But we have all witnessed small tokens of presence with another human being and its impact.  When we are distressed or in pain, the simple gesture of acknowledgment like a warm hug or a nodding head touches our hearts more profoundly than a billboard with our name on it.  Knowing someone hears you when you reach out and ask a question and responds in some way right then is more powerful than a prolific email at the end of the day with a list of possible answers.  The simple tokens we can use in our lives to demonstrate our presence with one another are not the ones that cost a lot of money.  They are the places inside of us longing to feel connection and when we see that in others and respond in kind were are expressing the tokens of our being to theirs.  It is not about creating a system or having specific tokens we use at specific times.  It is about being present and when we notice the token being called out for we find it in ourselves to give.  We allow God to work through us and generate the token of love needed for this moment.

God knows who we are because God created us.  If we remember to look to him to find our true identity we cannot go wrong. So often we end up trying to fit in and identifying with things outside of ourselves.  There is nothing wrong with identifying with other things, it is a matter of degrees.  In many ways it seems easier and more acceptable to identify with titles, groups of people who believe the same things, or specific roles we have.  We can latch on to those and forget our true identity.  What we are identifying ourselves with changes over the years because we grow and expand.  The identity we have in God does not change because it our essence.  God is love and she designed us as beacons and messengers of love.  God is peace and he calls us to bring love and create peace wherever we go.  Our calling comes to us at all times in our lives amidst the changing identities the world  has for us.  No matter if we are a daughter, mother, son or father, boss, employee, driver or passenger, we are and will always be messengers of love.

When we allow our relationship with God to take precedence in our lives we are opening the door to a multitude of possibilities all of which will lead to an expanded heart reality in which our souls dream.  Assenting to God’s knowing is allowing the light of love which we forget is living inside us, to seep through our every cell and allow for the presence of life-giving light.  It is not easy for us to let our egos take a breath and consider that not all the answers can be found inside our head. Our hearts will knock at the door of our minds through the interplay of emotions in our body in an effort to request cooperation.  God designed us to work in harmony with one another and within ourselves.  Dis-ease is present when we are lacking the peace of the assenting flow of love’s enlightening energy to move in and through us. Assenting to the flow of light allows our cells to move with breath and depth and play the role they were designed to play.  They do not get stressed out trying to do something they were never meant to do.  We are the same way as human beings.  We are each invited to assent to God’s design for life in our own unique way.  We fight it because it is not what others want from us, it seems too scary to step into, or we cannot picture how it is going to turn out.  We forget that God would not call us to be anything but the greatest fulfillment of the truth of love in the world and has equipped us with what we need in order to do so.  Sometimes simply knowing when to reach for God’s help in assenting to the grandest plan of our design is being given what we need in order to step into the true manifestation of ourselves.

God wants us to be the cause to our effect. God desires for us to draw our life’s blood from the love he causes in existence. Life invites us through seemingly challenging circumstances reflect on what is causing the effects in our lives.  When we stop to notice how we are showing up in the world and what impact we are having we see our effect.  Some of us don’t believe we are enough to impact anyone or anything but God sees things differently.  She did not create anything that would not make an impact.  We expect our impact to be grand and profound with big actions and results.  But think about the effect of the reassuring nod of acceptance and love you feel from a friend when you most need it. Remember a time when you took a chance to smile at a stranger and they surprised you by smiling back and your heart skipped a beat. We are not even aware of the effects we have on each other energetically.  If God is our cause then love becomes the underlying energy from which all our effects will be felt.

We have the attributes of our Creator. They are inherent in our design.  We can choose to develop any attributes we want but those endowed in us will allow for our greatest potential of being in the world.  Allowing the attributes of God in us to flourish we will find ourselves at our most effectiveness and power as well as a peace with ourselves in the world because that is who God is.  The attributes of God give us the courage to extend love in all circumstances.  They give us the eyes of our hearts through which to see ourselves and the world.  These attributes are emblazoned with the hope of light and love which make our hearts sing and our souls rejoice. We know we are tapped into and making use of these attributes when life is flowing, things make sense beyond a literal understanding, and we can sense the harmony with which life operates.

If we embrace who we are at our core we live a different kind of life.  When we experience breakdowns in our life we tend to see them as failures.  We focus on the cracks and brokenness from the breakdown.  We compare it to things that still appear whole.  We compare ourselves to when we felt put together and unbreakable.  When we witness nature we see her breakdowns as part of the process.  We have the seasons where the flowers bloom and shrivel up, the trees grow leaves and then they fall off when they die.  Yet the following spring new life returns. We find beauty in the breakdowns of nature.  Why is it that a leaf which is dying has so many more colors than the vibrant green color when it is fully alive?  Why are we drawn to the sunset as the light breaks down over the sky and most people would tell you it is more beautiful than the light of the sun at high noon in the desert?  Are we not also part of this same foundation of life?  Are we not created by the same One who designed all the intricate movements in nature?  Perhaps our breakdowns do not shake us lose from our foundation but cause us to stop and take a look at where we have rooted ourselves.  Maybe our breakdowns allow the light of God to seep into places we have decided to keep from God.  We go through life and until we are shaken up a little, we may not stop to question what our foundation is.  God wants us to recognize love as our true foundation.  They may need to come through a process of questioning ourselves and God about who we already thought God was.  Maybe God wants us to shake up our understanding of what kind of God we view as our foundation.  The process of mending from a breakdown reconnects us to our core foundation if we walk through it instead of run from it.