dailydatewithgod

God is calling. God is knocking. Are we answering?  Maybe we don’t recognize the ring.  Maybe we think the knock is next door. Maybe we keep expecting it to come in a way that makes sense to us.  I am guilty of not seeing God because I had a preconceived notion of how God was going to show up.  I remember many a time being in a Catholic mass and feeling like God wasn’t there. How could that be?  How could God not show up?  Maybe the readings didn’t make sense to me.  Perhaps the communion experienced seemed rote.  Maybe father’s homily didn’t connect with anything in my life.  These are all possibilities.   But what about the kid in the pew in front of me who kept turning around and smiling at me?  What about the older woman who stayed after mass to pray the rosary?  What about the man who stepped out of the way so his wife and kids could receive communion first?  What about the announcement for volunteers to help at the homeless shelter the following Sunday?  Maybe my vision of where God was supposed to show up was so clouded by an expectation that I missed all the other invitations in my heart?  Maybe because I have felt the presence of God very strongly in church before I just assumed it would always be in the same.  God is about surprising us.  God is about enchanting us and finding a million ways to say that He loves us in this moment.  Maybe God knew better than anyone that what I needed to return to my heart that day was not a profound homily but a smile from a child.  Whatever our spiritual practices are they do not define God.  God will continue to reach for our hearts in more ways than we can fathom.  My prayer for us today is a willingness to set aside everything we think we know about how God will be calling to our hearts and be open to answering.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

God is now.  God is present. God moves forward always.  We can emulate God when we remember that we cannot go back.  The past is there for our learning.  Its purpose when recalled is to notice patterns of being.  Each new moment is a fresh opportunity to be fully present and move with it.  If we take our mind space by a preoccupation with what has already happened, that is less energy for the present.  Then we find ourselves missing out on the very moments that propel us forward.  Wherever we are in the presence of our mind is what we take with us into the next moment. So our forwardness can come from the present or the past.  It is our choice.   God does not spend time ruminating over what we have done.  God is all about what we are going to now.  Sometimes there are amends to be made but those are changes going forward so that we don’t continue to act from the same place we did in the past.  My prayer for us today is a willingness to let the past be in the past and embrace the moment of now where God is and go forward.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

God is limitless.  God is boundless.  We were created in our fullness of spirit to create continually. We create with energy that is embodied in our thoughts and in our actions. We cannot help but be creative because we were designed by the ultimate creator.  The request that God has made of us is to create and expand the love that is within us.  God calls us to bear the fruit of love in all we do.  We have what we need to do this we just forget.  Our minds have often disconnected from our hearts in many ways causing us to not go to love as our first resource.  God can and will restore this within us if we ask.  When the restoration occurs we can be fruitful with our love in a boundless and limitless manner.  The return to love requires us to reach for the hand of God and admit that we have lost our way.  God does not judge but gets excited that we have asked to be restored.  My prayer for us today is that we be willing to ask for God’s helping hand in restoring our heart so that we can be fruitful in the creation of our day.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

God is the brilliance of the shining sun. God is the magnificence of a shooting star.  God is the softening of a warm hug.  We can live in and through this same reality when we want to.  Anytime it is open and available to us because God’s glorious being permeates all of reality.  The brilliance, magnificence, and warmth are present in so many forms if we open our eyes.  Not just the eyes in our head, but the eyes of our heart and soul.  They are what guide us to connect with the glory. If we slow down a bit and get quiet and connect within we will notice that deep down we want to be in the space and experience of glory.  We desire at the most core of our being to be so connected to our creator that our heart leaps when we are present to it in the smallest of forms.  It doesn’t need to be grand gestures of love that move us.  Sometimes I am struck in the deepest way by the simplest of expressions.  Today I saw a man open the car door for his date as they were leaving the restaurant and as I took a breath I noticed that my heart was smiling.  A very simple act of kindness has the power to move and transform us.  When we allow it in, we can then spread the glory of love in our own small way.  My prayer for us today is that the eyes of our heart and soul be open to witnessing the glory of love in the smallest of ways and in that moment breathe it in.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

God of All Understanding knows no separation.  God of All Awareness knows no discord.  God of All Perceptions knows no barriers to love.  We are invited with each interaction and breath and step of our lives to connect with All Understanding, All Awareness, and All Perception.  Our spirits already know it.  Our soul’s goal is to get us to remember it.  Our life is a series of lessons meant to teach us what our hearts already know.  We are One.  There is no separation.  There is no discord.  There is no barrier to love.  If there was, then there would be no God.  We can choose to embrace this full nature of God if we are willing to let go of our ego’s ideas of reality.  This is a challenge for me.  I find myself not in agreement with another person on how to handle something.  I see myself getting irritated by a co-worker.  I remember a time when I was rejected by someone close to me in the past.  All signs point to how I am so different from each one of these people. I would never handle it that way.  I would be more mindful of how I am affecting others.  I would never hurt someone so deeply.  But how do I know?  I cannot begin to comprehend other people’s perceptions.  I have not walked in their shoes.  I do not face the things that they face every day of their lives or see what they see when they look in the mirror.  Maybe how they are behaving is the best they can do or at least all they know in that moment.  I can only do what I know to do. When I humbly recognize that I am no different, I am willing to learn.  I am open to what my soul and the Spirit can teach me through this interaction. In my heart of hearts I want to fully embrace all that God is and be one with that way of being.  So I turn to my date and say: I need your help. Please be with me in this moment and teach me how to love. My prayer is that we all be willing to fully embrace God in the moment we need to learn to love today.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

The Great Creator sees all.  The Great Creator envisions all.  The Great Creator bestows love over all.  When we wake up and remember our origins we are struck with complete awe.  We begin to hold life with gratitude and humility.  We realize that we are seen by an unseen God.  We resound in and out of our being a connection to All That Is.  If we are beholden in such a way, how can we possibly think that there is anything but love?  Easy.  We get out of alignment.  We fall for the false pretense that all there is exists in physical form. God cannot be grasped and put in a box or a church or a doctrine or a philosophy.  God presents love in the form of us.  But when we forget who we are we act in ways that are not in accordance with our very selves.  Then we seek out ways to clench to God and hope that God sees us.  We think that if we say the right words or do the right things that we will win back God’s favor.  But what if it was never lost?  What if we just fell behind the screen and started believing that what was projected on the screen was the reality?  If so, then God surely would have to be present in the way in which only we can imagine God to because we need God to save us.  If we are willing to let go of the illusion then our eyes will begin to see what is not there and we will find ourselves beheld by God.  The apostle Paul talked about this very thing when he wrote to the community in Corinth:

God’s beauty is evidenced in every living being.  God enhances all of life by endowing it with the purest form of love.  God adorns all of creation.  We are the gifts of this world.  We are the bearers of light and love.  We are the crowning jewels.  There is nothing that we do that makes this happen.  It is who we are.  When we are in a situation and all we see is the darkness, we have lost our eyes.  When we think that life is boring and holds no joy we have lost connection with our heart.  God is always present to the gift that we are because God created us as gifts.  God made sure that we would bring the decoration of our hearts to the party.  If we do not see it perhaps it is because we are not bringing it.  When I find myself in a thought mode that lacks the awareness of a three-year old who finds everything wondrous, I know that I need God’s help to restore my thinking.  In the Christian scriptures, Jesus instructed his disciples saying, ” I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” and “Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me does not welcome me but the one who sent me.” Children decorate themselves with ribbons, they paint their faces, and they giggle for no reason.  They watch bugs crawl across leaves and drop their mouths open when they are surprised.  Life completely fascinates them.  They marvel at decorations and jump at the chance to adorn something with their own special touch.  These qualities do not leave us.  God invites us to awaken them and through using the decoration of our hearts touch our every moment.  My prayer for us today is that we be willing to reconnect to the decoration of our hearts and see the gifts that we can bring to one another be being who we are created to be.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

God is enlightenment.  God is wisdom.  God invites us to be one with Wisdom at each moment. It is not something to attain.  It is a quality to embrace.  All the elements of our innate wisdom are ready for the taking.  It is only that when we are walking in darkness we cannot see them.  We are called to tune in to the light within us and gain access to all that is. In our heart space exists a vast knowing that emanates from a light that is connected to God. Even in our every day life that is filled with things to handle outside of ourselves, we can stop and connect to that space of illumination.  Pausing and breathing is the first step.  The next step is touching our heart.  Over the years one of the greatest benefits I have discovered in my date times with God is the willingness as my day goes on to stop and connect.  My prayer for us today is that we allow ourselves to be in the space of illumination any time we sincerely seek it.  Make it a great one! Peace~Colleen

God loves us beyond reason.  God calls us over and over again to draw close.   God invites to entertain the possibility that love as God designed knows no boundaries.  If we are courageous enough to accept God’s invitation then the world opens up and entertains us.  Everything we experience becomes an opportunity to be with love or bring love.  Each moment entertains the possibilities of miracles. I know when I am willing to believe even for just a moment that God’s understanding of love is more profound than my own and I admit it, there is an opening in my heart. I find myself delighted by the simplest of things–a kind gesture, a smile, the way the sunlight hits the water.  It is as though everything that is present in the world is alive.  And the second I step out of that moment, the entertainment of life is gone.   The jewel is in the present.  I know that each day in my date with God my Creator reminds me I have as many opportunities in the day ahead to be entertained by life as I want.  Most importantly God whispers to me that when I forget all I have to do is breathe and reach for God’s hand.  My prayer for us today is a willingness to take a chance that this day holds many opportunities to entertain the limitless possibilities of love.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

God holds us wholly.  God binds us in love.  God merges us with love.  In facing each new day we always have a choice to seize upon the opportunity to be at one with Our Creator and the Divine Will of love or go our own way. God does not force us to choose love. God does not bargain with us to step into the Divine Will.  It is however at the core of our being.  There is always a part of us that wants nothing other than what God has to offer because at our very basic we know it is who we are.  God releases us upon the fulfillment of our creation to create on our own.  We just get a little lost somewhere along the way and forget who we are and where we come from.  We believe that we are only who and what we are in the physical sense.  But if that were true then we would not struggle to explain all the non-physical realities and energy that we experience on a day-to-day basis.  We can tune them out.  I know I certainly did for many years.  I was convinced that who I was physically in the person of Colleen with my body was the most important element of my existence.  I always had an awareness and relationship with God, but it was not one that I relied upon completely or used to its capacity.  Only when I released my ideas of certainty of who I am and to whom I belonged did I begin to experience kinship with God.  To embrace the complete love of our creator we are invited to release all that stands in opposition to the belief that it is all we need.  Bit by bit it can be done.  Trusting a little at a time I placed the experiences and choices of my life in God’s hands and moved forward.  My prayer for us today is that we be willing to release one old idea that we identify ourselves with and ask God if there is truth to it.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen