dailydatewithgod

One of the most cherishable elements of ourselves is our capacity for hope. At times it is palpable.  Conversely when we think or feel that we have lost all hope, things look very dark and dim.  When you listen to someone speak of hope they have about something, there is a part of them that lights up. When you watch someone talk of hopelessness their shoulder slump, eyes look down and they seem to be carrying the weight of the world.  I have definitely experienced both sides of the hope coin.  The remarkable characteristic of hope is that it doesn’t take much to help it grow.  All it needs is the spark.  The spark of belief in hope itself. When we reach for God, God reaches back for us ten times over.  All we need to do is be willing to believe that hope is one of the surest signs that God is still with us.  If we have any reason to hope, then we can trust it to keep growing if we keep focusing on it.  My prayer for us today is that if there is an area of our lives that lacks hope that we ask God, where are you in this?  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

The good news is that you are whole and complete.  I know it is not what we are told by this world.  This world sees parts and elements, one side and not the other, and separation.  The ego lives on the theory of separation–persons, bodies, and ideas.  This is how we know it is not the mind of God.  We were created whole and complete and no matter what we may have done or believed in our minds, does not change the reality of God’s creation.  Our task is to be willing to let go of our separate thinking.  We can ask God for assistance as God is more than happy to remind us of the view through which God sees us.  When we are aligned with the thinking of God there is no separateness or pieces, there is only the whole.  My prayer for us today is that when we catch ourselves seeing just one part of something that we ask God to broaden our perspective to see the wholeness.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

When we designed out of love from the very beginning.  Even before we took shape, when we were simply an idea in the mind of God, we were LOVE.  In fact, our very creation was God outpouring love onto the world.  Then as we step into the world and experience and encounter non-loving experiences and an ego that needs a physical identity, we take on the identity and the story presented in the circumstance. This all happens on an unconscious level because as children of love and light we simply want to remedy what is the lack of light and love in our world.  We are giving and generous but lack tools so we take it on thinking that will make it better.  However, even at that young age we forget that if we take it on we are not meant to keep it.  The best thing we can do is take it, bring it to God and ask what do you want me to do with this?  Over time we carry these stories and ideas and believe them to be who we are and we forget all together that which we truly are.  Our task then as conscious adults is to let go little by little of these stories that are layered on top of the truth of who we are.  God invites us gently, sometimes through the most harrowing of experiences where our stories don’t work anymore, to let go.  Let go of the untruth and remember the truth of who we are.  In God’s eyes we are never anything less that what was created, but God knows that our forgetfulness can be powerful.  But nothing is more powerful than God.  My prayer for us today is that we ask God if there is anything standing in the way of forgetting who we truly are and the courage and the tools to let it go.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

This time of year brings about a level of consciousness to how we are living our lives. As we wrap up the year, we look at where we have been, what we have accomplished and where we want to go in the next year.  There are top ten lists of all kinds from movies, people, major events, sayings, and trends of all kinds. Whether one is interested in stopping and reflecting on the year it is being asked of us by many different people.  There is talk of new year’s resolutions or intentions and what hopes we might have in the coming year after reflecting on how we have spent this year.  It is all quite arbitrary considering that the construct of the end of one year and the beginning of the new one is a change of numbers that some dudes in robes in Rome decided on centuries ago.  But is an agreed upon system of measurement.  The reality is that we can reflect at any moment.  Each time we are given a breath, one moment ends and another begins.  We can choose then, even if it is random Sunday in December, to reflect on how we spent that moment and want to spend the next.  I like this time of year with its contemplation and reflection.  I like checklists and evaluations because my ego wants to validate that I can still fit my definition of self-a good employee, a good friend, a good citizen, an all around responsible human being, etc.  There is nothing wrong with those definitions, but they are limited to the outer expressions. This year as I look back I want to notice if my heart has grown any bigger.  What uncomfortable situations have I walked through holding God’s hand that seemed like a mess but allowed me to let go of an old idea?  How often have I laughed?  How many people have I stopped to look in the eye?  Was I as present as possible in my top ten conversations with those that I love this year?  Did I get back up after I got knocked down and did I learn from my “mistakes”?  What ways am I open to my heart growing more in the next year?  How many people do I want to be of service to next year without them knowing?  Do I want to listen closer when God and I spend our date time together next year?  Will I spend less time doing and more time being?  My prayer for us today is that as we wrap up the year in gifts and reflection, we be open to acknowledging the unseen ways in which we have been this year and look forward to more.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

All of life is an invitation.  Each breath is an invitation to keep going, to wake up, and to connect with spirit-to inspire.  We sometimes get lost in the day-to-day to-dos that we forget we have a choice in the matter.  It is however, more about who we are being than what we are doing.  The world measures us by our “to-dos” but Spirit measures us by our “bes”.  If our to-dos come from our bes then we find ourselves living in harmony with our spirit through our actions.  If our to-dos are only in alignment with the world’s expectations and our ego’s sense of self then we lose connection with our spirit.  Sometimes I notice this when I realize that I am not breathing and am tense.  My breath becomes my indication of connection with spirit–literally and figuratively. God invites us over and over when the strain of the demand of the ego’s to-dos gets to be too much, to come to him and be restored to our being.  But we don’t have to wait for it to get too bad, we can choose to be restored at any moment, with each breath.  My prayer for us today is that we stop in the middle of our to-dos and check-in to see if our spirit is present as well.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

Our minds are powerful and creative centers.  We are given a tremendous gift by God that enables us to shape our reality.  How we view things in our lives is a direct correlation to what we make them mean.  We do not see things as they “actually” are, we see things as we think we see them.  This is why two people can be present at the same event and see two different things.  Everything we witness with our eyes goes through the lens of our perception.  If I am having a good day a compliment is lovely and it matches my perception of my good day. If I am having a bad day it can be welcomed as a switch to my thinking or even be rejected because I don’t see what the other person is talking about.  Today it is raining and is said to be raining heavily all day in southern California.  This means I can expect a wet, messy, hectic, stressful experience –and that is just getting out the door to put my stuff in the car before I even get into traffic!  Or, it can be a smooth, cleansing, appreciation of moving a little slower and really paying attention to what is in front of me.  It is entirely up to me.  The survival mechanism of my brain is braced for the first experience but as I sit down to my date with God this morning I am reminded that I have another option.  I have several other options.  I can show God where my head wants to go with my vision for the day and ask, does this match what you have in mind for my day?  Show me another way to perceive the possibilities for the day?  To which God smiles and winks at me and says, I think we can do better than what your limited mind came up with. Stick with me kid and today can be full of surprises.  I am happy to be with you as much or as little as you would like. My prayer for us today, no matter what outer circumstances we are facing, is we walk into our day or the next hour, that we bring our seemingly fixed perception honestly to God and ask if there isn’t a possible change and chance to create something different.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

The specialness of gifts is not only in their content but also in their delivery, intention, and reception.  We have all had experiences when we were given a gift that we did not want.  Or even when it was something we did want, we don’t know how to receive it.  I mean fully receive it by acknowledging the giver, the effort to obtain and present the gift and the contribution it makes to our lives.  We tend to approach gifts from God in the same way.  God’s gifts sometimes come wrapped in messy wrapping paper and without a bow. Sometimes they seem more like hardships than gifts. Any gift we are given comes with a responsibility–an ability to respond.  We can either accept the gift as is, be indifferent to it, or wish it away.  Any of those responses are our decision.  But what if we looked at the intention behind the gift?  What if we recognized that sometimes the most unlikely of circumstances and experiences cause us to grow in ways we never expected?  We have the ability to respond by receiving with a simple Thank You, no matter what the gift is.  Then we can ask the Giver, what do you wish me to do with this gift?  How will this cause me to grow in love?  My prayer for us today is that we be open to receiving the non-gift looking gifts of our day as invitations to grow in love and say Thank you.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

We are given all that we need to take the greatest course of our lives.  God did not drop us off on this human experience and abandon us.  When we are thinking that we can’t do it and we are lost.  If we find ourselves wandering around without a sense of direction it is not because we lack the know-how or the skills.  It is because we have exhausted all our human resources.  We have reached the limit of our limited mind.  What seems like a dead-end is simply an invitation to seek out a God-end.  We were never meant to do this life separate from God.  That is what our ego tells us.  EGO=Edging God Out. When we pause and get quiet we are afforded the chance to reconnect to Our Creator who is always ready and willing to join in this experience with us.  We can discern-acknowledge when we need more than our own resources.  It can be humbling to our ego, but given that our ego is all about illusions that perception of humility is only fleeting.  When we actually invite God in to work through us and in us, we experience a power greater than we could ever know on our own resources. This is what miracles are made of.  I can go through my day only operating from my limited resources or I can experience the beauty of life on multiple levels when I walk in partnership with God.  That is part of the gift of my date time with God each morning.  It is a chance for me to invite God into my day at the get-go.  Then I am more likely to include God (how nice of me, huh?) throughout the rest of the day.  My prayer for us today is that we have the eyes and hearts to see that when we feel beaten down or defeated, exhausted or frustrated, we can know it is not the end of the story but the beginning of the God-invitation.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

We are all created from the mind of God. It is said in the Hebrew scriptures that God knew of us before we were even formed in the womb.  This connection, this relationship that we have to the Eternal One goes far beyond our understanding of connection and relationship.  This is the good news.  If it is beyond our understanding, then anything we think about it cannot change it.  It is simply not within our realm to make it untrue.  We can completely rely on the idea that God knows us and we can know God.  Our knowledge of God can begin whenever we want it to because it is already established.  It simply requires an acknowledgment or a remembering for us to reignite the experience.  My prayer for us today is that we awaken in some small way to the fact that God’s knowledge of us and our knowledge of God is alive and well.  Make it a great one! Peace~Colleen

The grand blessing of being a being created out of love is that we are called to greatness. We are called to greatness because it is the fullest extension of living in the being of the love that we are.  It is not the measurement of greatness of the world. It is not about being the best or the brightest.  It is about being love with great power.  That power comes from the Being of Love that created us.  Whenever we are the opposite of the greatest version of ourselves we are simply not connected to who we truly are.  We are not connected to Our Creator who designed us in love.  When that happens we can simply pause and reconnect.  God show me what being in love means right here right now.  God help me to see and feel you right here right now.  God who would you have me be right here right now? My prayer for us today is that we remember in those moments that seem less than an embrace of greatness that we reach out and connect to the one who calls us to LOVE.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen