dailydatewithgod

God gives.  There are no restrictions when God gives.  The bounty of love is unrestrained. The level of our perception of the giving may be confined to specific requirements or conditions.  God does not have these same limits of perception.  God is ready and willing, it is our job to receive.  There isn’t a condition for the ability to breathe.  It is only a matter of taking in the air.  Each person is given this capability, it is up to us to tap into it.  The bounty of love resides within us at all times.  It is the blocks and restrictions that we place over our heart that keep us from connecting to it.  Our mind then latches on to the story attached to the blocks and restrictions which create a shell that prevents us from looking underneath.  We believe the ideas because we repeat them in our mind.  God simply wants to remind us that we need not believe what our minds tell us about the capability of love because it all too often gets disconnected from the knowledge of the bounty of love.  The spirit of God is that which can bring us to an opening in the shell.  Once we are willing to still ourselves long enough to take a look, we can begin to uncover the bounty.  We get to choose if we want to hold on to our restrictions and blocks or let them go.  We can even choose to let them go on a case by case basis so as to build evidence for the mind to remember the existence of the bounty of love or all at once.  God is in no hurry and God knows the bounty awaiting our recollection is far beyond the reaches of our mind.

God is all.  It is an unreachable mystery to us why certain things are allowed to happen or exist.  Sometimes we just cannot wrap our heads around the concept of accepting of what is.  It might be a situation at work or how a friend or stranger is behaving.  Half the time driving around Los Angeles I do not understand what makes people do the seemingly reckless things they do in their cars.  I am however, fully aware that I do not have the full picture.  I do not know where that person’s mind is when they are driving their car.  I do not know what happened just before they got in the car.  I certainly have no clue how long they have even been a driver.  Who am I to say what they are doing or how they are being is wrong?  Maybe their behavior awakens me to pay closer attention to what I am doing.  Maybe their interruption in my drive is keeping me from getting in an accident.  One of my favorite spiritual thinkers, Florence Scovel-Shin, writes about the importance of acknowledging a desire or wanting with the tag line of “if it is for the greater good.”  To me it is about recognizing I cannot possibly see all of the reasons or outcomes in a situation. It is about acknowledging what I might want or like in a situation but turning it over to a power greater than myself who can see all.  Life is so intricate and God invites us to place equal importance upon the love within us all.  I used to think equity in love was about treating everyone exactly the same, making everyone my best friend, or sharing all of myself with everyone.  I learned through trial and error that equity of love is about intention.  It is about an openness to seeing the people whom I meet and interact as the innocence of love they are.  It is about asking God to help me see others this way when even they don’t see themselves this way.

God breathes.  Have you ever noticed that light at the beginning of the day kinda creeps in?  It’s not like turning on a light switch in a dark room.  It is like nature’s call to ease into the day.  Hmm, my alarm clock didn’t get that memo.  I feel as though my daily prayer and meditation dates with God provide a relaxing entrance into the day.  It doesn’t mean I don’t wake up sometimes with a head full of worries or a strong sense of what needs to be done that day.  Somehow by pausing before jumping all in, I allow the most important element of connection with my heart and my Creator ease into the driver seat of my life.  Before I started my days with my dates I entered my day much like someone who is blinded by a light that switched on in a dark room.  I would literally stumble out of bed and bump into stuff.  I didn’t even get a chance for my eyes to adjust let alone the eyes of my heart.  I knew enough in automatic pilot of what needed to get done first and except for the time of deep depression and the roughest spots of my addiction, I was able to accomplish those things. The reality was that my heart was still in the dark and I was carrying the load of the world on my shoulders with no sense of what it was all for.  I can’t think of a less relaxing way to start the day, can you?  I am grateful God never gave up on me or my heart even when I had given up on me.  And much like the entrance of light, God found a relaxing way to let me know when I was ready to listen.