Today's quotation:

There's an old saying that God made us in His image, and we've been trying to return the favor ever since.  People often view God in a human image.  This God changes His mind, gets upset, answers some prayers but not others, loves some people but not others.  But even with that limited image, if we pray sincerely, we'll eventually realize that God is changeless.  He's the same all the time because He's not in time-- time is in Him.

Michael Beckwith

Today's Meditation:

We like to limit God in our minds.  We put him/her/it into one of these limited human bodies, we attribute petty things to God, and we accuse God of some pretty silly things.  What we do is create a God who's not really God, but just some being who's only slightly more powerful, slightly more omniscient than we are.  This is a shame, because our thoughts of God should help us through life rather than limit our perspective of God.

Of course, many people don't even believe that a God exists, so this doesn't really matter to them.  That's okay.  Personally, I believe in a force that's greater than ourselves, and I think that that's what God is-- I don't subscribe to the belief that God is just a being in human form.  God has to be more than that, or s/he wouldn't be God at all.  We've been created to love and to explore and to enjoy and learn and grow, and this doesn't feel like an accident to me.  I don't try to assign a form to God, and I don't claim to know anything about God's powers or motivations.  God simply is to me, and one day I may find out the true nature of God.  For now, though, I'm focused on trying to discover the true nature of me and the world in which I live.

Your relationship with God is your relationship with God.  It's for you to define and you to enjoy.  And if you say there is no God, I respect that-- I've been wrong about a lot of things in life, so who's to say that I'm not wrong when I say that there's a God?

If you do have a relationship with God, though, make sure that it's a healthy one.  Don't blame God for you being sick-- that's a question of germs or viruses or DNA or bacteria.  Don't blame God for a failed relationship-- those generally happen because it's time to move on to a healthier relationship.  Don't think that God is keeping score and looking for ways to punish you-- God is love, and love doesn't do that.  Give all you can to the relationship without expectations of returns, and you'll find that the returns end up being far more wonderful than you ever would have expected.

For further thought:

A tragic mistake that is often made is to assume that the will of God is bound to be something very dull and uninviting, if not positively unpleasant.  Consciously or not some persons look upon God as a hard taskmaster, or a severe parent. . . . The truth is that the will of God for us always means greater freedom, greater self-expression, newer and brighter experience, wider opportunity of service to others—life more abundant.

Emmet Fox

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