dailydatewithgod

The Great Creator has instilled within us a place of sacredness that cannot be touch or harmed.  This sacred part of ourselves is that which belongs to ourselves and to God and nothing outside of us can change that.  We can think that it can, but thinking does not make it so.  In the depth of our being, a place where a stillness of reality exists.  In a quiet place of stillness within where God resides at all times, this sacred nature remains pure and everlasting.  It is our greatest connection to our creator.  It permeates our being even if we are out of touch with it. As God calls us to remember who we are we become re-acquainted with what resides in this place of stillness.  In the Hebrew scriptures, God says, “Be Still and Know that I AM God.”  It this untouched space we know nothing but God.  As an incest survivor, I was certain for a long time that my innocence had been stolen.  But nothing that happened to me externally has changed my true essence.  My innocence has always been intact because God placed it there.  It is the still space within me that knows who I truly am.  It is the place that never forgets that I was created with and for love.  That is the innocence–the recognition of one’s true purpose and being.  Everything else is just a story.  Connecting with that came about when I realized that any notion of my innocence being taken or destroyed comes from the idea that something outside of me could undo God.  When nothing has been stolen or tainted there is no one to blame.  When there is no one to blame we are not a victims of anything.  When we are not victims of circumstance then we are free to be.  My prayer for us today is that in whatever area of our lives where we feel like a piece of ourselves or our innocence was stolen, we pause and ask God if that is true or not.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

God of all graciousness is enchanted with us all.  We are the creations, the fruition of God’s love made manifest in the Universe.  Who wouldn’t be allured by that?  Just because we don’t see that in ourselves or each other does not change what God sees.  It is in surrendering the idea that there is something wrong with us that we do not see like God that we become open to learning how to do so.  The problem is not that we do not embody more of God’s nature and way of being.  The problem is that we think that there is something we need to do to overcome it ourselves.  We only need to be willing to recognize what is present and real for us and if it is not of God or God-thinking, then be willing to be revived to true reality.  I know that when I make myself wrong for things, I am utilizing a way of being that I took as a coping skill to make sense of reality.  A reality of fear based on the idea that there must be someone to blame.  It is a tool that I have utilized for many years and I really believed that it worked for me for a long time.  As I have gotten to know God better through our dates, I realized that anything driven from fear lacks love.  Anything that lacks love cannot grow to fullness.  Anything that is not able to grow to fullness cannot shine the light of truth.  Anything that cannot shine the light of truth does not make manifest the love of God.  What I do know is that when I engage in the conversation (mostly just in my own head, of course) that I am wrong for thinking or feeling something, a few things are happening.  One, I am no longer in the present moment and have separated from God. Two, I am focused more on myself as an individual and have separated myself from others and from God.  Three, I am taking my thinking as the final word and have separated myself from God’s thinking.  None of these modes will get me to a place of peace because they are all separating me from the very being that wants to be with me.  With all of me.  My prayer for us today is when we find ourselves in the space of self-judgment we have the courage to pause and ask for God to intervene, revive our thinking, and bring us back home.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

God of great mercy and understanding loves beyond measure.  The depth of God’s acceptance is beyond our understanding.  God’s capacity for love and forgiveness is something that we can tap into but does not come naturally to us.  The world tells us that God’s way of being is not possible.  Of course it is not possible within our human understanding alone.  But all of us have had moments when we are in touch with something outside of ourselves, outside of rational explanation.  It is those experiences that tug at our spirits and remind us that we are much more than we appear to be.  If we continually open ourselves up to such an experience, let go of our mind’s need to understand, we can expect more of it.  God does not make connecting with our true essence difficult, we do.  We spend so much of our time believing the stories that we have created that they become embedded in our cells and then we literally live out the stories as though they are the only reality.  When I invite God in: God grant me the courage to see this differently; I am asking for a chance to remember who I truly am in God’s eyes.  I do this when I can recognize that continuing with the current story no longer serves me or anyone else.  There is sometimes a sorrow that occurs.  Yet, the moment I move in that direction and make a decision to trust Infinite God instead of my finite mind, an acceptance and freedom occurs far beyond any explanation.  My prayer for us today is that we be willing to ask for the courage to admit to God one thing that is no longer working for us and invite a new possibility.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

God of All Understanding wants to be involved in all of our lives.  God will not come in uninvited.  God wants to walk the path of our experiences with us, be there as we grow, change, evolve, and return to our true nature. God wants to hep us by reminding us constantly of who we really are.  God knows that it will be a bumpy ride but we can hang on to him whenever we need.  God is by our side and immersed in being with us even when we don’t want to be with us. From God we learn how not to abandon ourselves. I know that being present in this life means being present for all of it.  Not just the things that I expect, hope for, work towards, or wish for myself and others.  God wants us to experience all of the fullness of love in the human experience so that we can connect through those experiences with our true essence which is beyond those experiences.  For many years I thought my role was to spiritualize my way out of my humanness.  Slowly as God showed up to be with me each day for our date,  I realized that while I was trying so hard to do that, God was in the trenches of my humanity ready to stick it out.  It was me that abandoned me or turned my back on me, not God.  It was me that deemed my prayer and meditation time was not enough.  It was me that wasn’t measuring up to some insane level of kindness that denied my essence of presence.  God is not afraid of my darkness because God doesn’t buy into the illusion that there is any kind of darkness that can outshine the light that God placed deep within me.  My prayer for us today is that we be willing to immerse ourselves in the very places of our human experience that we think God is not and be open to how God is not limited by our perception of places not to be.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

The Grand Designer put in place the unlimited expression of love.  There is room for all manifestations of love. There is room for all of us as beings of love.  We do not lose out when one of us shines bright.  It gives us all permission to shine bright. We are not doing it wrong when we do not manifest love in the same way as someone else.  We are all of value.  We are all needed to cover the magnanimity of love.  God created such diversity so that all bases were covered.  This way there is not one corner of the earth where love does not exist.  Remember, God does not have eyes, ears, hands, feet.  We are God’s eyes, ears, hands and feet for one another.  Our grand purpose is to fulfill the message of love through our lives.  Our lives and experiences are different because love can be made manifest in any situation.  The diverse capacity of love cannot be hidden because God is within all.  We do not do anyone any favors when we compare ourselves to others thinking that their manifestation of love is better or less than ours.  We must stay focused on being the love that we are the way that we uniquely are.  This is our great service to God-to be the best version of our unique self and show the world that love exists everywhere.  My prayer for us today is that we not get sidetracked by comparing ourselves to others and stay focused on how we can be the love that we uniquely are.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

God of all creation call us to carry the latest and the greatest message of love.  Fortunately the task for which we have been called to mission has not changed. It is the same one that is already imprinted on our hearts. We do not have to look very far to connect with the task to which we have been entrusted.  In the quiet space of our hearts it speaks loudly and clearly.  In the warmth of our spirits, a strong power is ignited.  Our job is to let go of the things that we have placed on top of our hearts so that we can easily and effortlessly connect with the power and the message.  It is a continual process because we live day-to-day and take on new stories and ideas that are not our true selves.  God can help us to be restored and upgraded to our truest selves if we invite God into the process.  God wants very much to relieve us of anything that is not our true essence but God will not come into our hearts uninvited.  The reason that I don’t invite God in for an upgrade is because I get caught up in the identification and forget that it is not my true self.  When God and I spend time together on our dates,  I am reminded of who I truly am and am given the chance to choose to let go of that which is not truly me.  It really is just that easy.  It is only my ego which has become attached and thinks it will die if I let go of the story.  God reminds me that I cannot be destroyed by a story one way or the other.  My true essence transcends any story and is always present even when God is the only one who can see it and bear witness to it.  My prayer for us today is that we be willing to trust that God knows our truest self and even if any upgrade seems like a loss of the old, remember that it is a loss of the false, not the old.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

God see all through the eyes of love because it is in every fiber of the being of God.  Consequently, there is constant possibility from God’s perspective.  Abundance and Connectedness is the reality of God’s world.  There is no lack, limitation or separation.  Those things only exist on the physical three-dimensional plane. When we forget that we are spiritual beings having a human experience, we buy into the ideas held strongly by our ego mind that it is all there is.  Having an ego is not the problem.  The problem is when we let the ego think it is all there is.  When we edge god out we lose out.  When we stay connected, when we remember who we truly are, we are in alignment with the constant possibility. It is this partnership with God that our hearts crave because it puts us in right relationship with ourselves and our world.  It is not about destroying our ego or being above our ego.  It is about placing our ego in the hands of God to show us how we are much more than just our ego. When I am in the thinking mode of separation, limitation or lack I know that I am not connected to God as fully as I can be.  I know now that all I need to do is reach my hand out and God is ready to grab hold and take me back on the magic carpet ride that is my fullness of life.  My prayer for us today is that we have the courage to notice without judgment when we have let our thinking be dominated by our ego (i.e.-focus on lack, limitation or separation) and reach yet again for God’s hand of love.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

The Great Spirit of Life has endowed us with an unshaken foundation.  The Creator of All Creation designed us to make manifest the Glory of Love.  You, yes you, and I were given breath to be the living expression of All that God Is.  We are continually given breaths over and over (until we breathe our last one, of course). These breaths remind us that we are a life to love with, be in love with, and share love with.  When we get caught up in the physical world which seems to dominate our reality, we easily lose sight of the magnificent power that is in our breathing in and out.  Meditation, the focusing of the mind, starts by focusing on our breath.  There are a million different ways to meditate but undeniably those who make a practice of it share their experience of coming to awareness through their breath.  All of life begins with breathing, all of life ends with breathing.  Our lives are shaped by the breaths that make up the time in between.  I know that when I lived a life full of anxiousness, terror, and dread my breath was shallow and in some cases held.  In my dates with God as I began to trust in the graciousness of the gift of each of my breaths, I noticed I was better able to actually breathe and reap the benefits of a fresh breath into my life and my being.  My prayer for us today is that we be open to focusing on our breath long enough to say thank you to the one who created it.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

The realm of God has only one side–LOVE. The back and forth, the in and out are all a design of nature so that we know both sides of the story.  Everything in our physical world mirrors these two sides.  This is how we know that God’s reality is different from ours.  God’s existence speaks and spreads nothing but one reality–LOVE.  This is beyond our mind’s comprehension.  But it is not beyond our experience.  When we draw closer to God we are able to witness the presence of LOVE even in the seemingly opposite of that.  In some of the toughest and darkest moments of my life, when I felt distant from God or drenched in self-hatred, self-pity, or I thought that I was a victim and would never escape; there within me still existed love.  I just didn’t know how to connect to it.  I had to first let go of the story that the outer experience was the truth of who I am.  I had to concede to the idea that maybe I wasn’t experiencing the full picture.  I had to be willing to act as though the spark of hope that somehow still breathed in my heart was bigger than I thought it was.  As they say in 12 step programs, I acted “as if”.  In so doing I slowly began to experience the fluctuations of hope in my heart in greater degrees.  Now when I have moments of self-hatred, victim-mentality, or self-pity I know that they will not last.I can grasp on to the hope that has an even greater hold on my heart and pulsates through my body when I connect more fully with God.  My prayer for us today is that we recognize that the fluctuations we experience need not be as drastic if we are willing to let go of them as our identity and rest in the hope of our hearts that speak God’s language of love.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

God began the work of love made manifest through all of creation.  We are given the task of continuing that work through the living of our lives.  We are the continuance of the message of love.  We are the carriers of light and love and it is our mission to embody this fully so that the world may bear witness to the power of love. It is no small task, but we can be heartened by the fact that it is built within us.  We do not need to go outside of ourselves to find this purpose.  It is in our DNA.  We were designed by love, for love, in love to be love.  So how is it that we often don’t feel connected to this purpose?  We get lost sometimes in this world and allow other things to take precedence.  It happens so easily and so elusive sometimes that it isn’t until we are way off the path that we notice.  But it is in the noticing that we take the first step towards returning to the path of love which we are and were created.  The world will tell us to beat ourselves up for not noticing sooner or “wasting” time.  God, however (like the father of the prodigal son) will rejoice that we have come home and throw us a party.  My prayer for us today is that we be willing to notice the areas of our lives where we have not continued on the path of love and ask God for the willingness to step back on the path.  Make it a great one! Peace~Colleen