…and in His judgment will a world unfold in perfect innocence before your eyes. ACIM WB 164
Dear Hearts,
Do you think you can judge God?
Perhaps you feel you are right to evaluate,
to appraise His world.
Perhaps you have judged God to be
a failure, a loser. Perhaps He is dead,
or so ineffectual that He might as well be.
Maybe God is weak or too uninterested in
His creation to mend our broken hearts,
or heal our suffering planet.
The words sound coarse to the open heart,
but feelings like this are part of
the human condition.
After all, life is difficult. Love is sporadic;
rage is on the rise.
I have felt disappointed in God.
I have blamed Him for neglecting me.
Ego gently slips his tongue through the
narrow curl of its lips and licks.
It salivates as we doubt;
quickens as we think God a failure.
For every judgment and appraisal of
our Source is an appraisal of His creation.
If God is dead, or weak, or ineffectual,
so am I; so are you.
Judging God, we judge our self.
For it is His Life in us
that sets our hearts to beating, and our
desires into fruition. It is His Life within
that creates and extends, giving
infinite power, and eternal freedom to love.
But we have judged love too, making the real,
subjective and conditional. We have spun
a gnat’s eye view of Love’s meaning in our lives
and proclaimed it true.
To judge this way is an arrogance that conceals
the underbelly of our despair.
Ego offers abundant editorials on God,
none of which touch Truth.
It is like a gong without a mallet.
It is like a tree without root.
It is mind without Source.
God is not flustered or hurt by our madness.
We are. Our thoughts become prayers
and our prayers, prophecies,
fulfilled by the very Power in us,
which is also capable of healing our hearts,
our relationships, our separation.
Shared doubts become collective perceptions;
our faithlessness based on paltry scraps
of information broadcast through the hypnotized
senses of a harried news caster,
a sense- sationalism that bolsters the ratings,
a fear that collars our conversations,
as we are seized with opinions,
filled with propagandized needs,
righteous with values that attack to protect.
Our twisted judiciousness is born
in the shadows of unreliable sources.
Really we have no business judging God, or self.
We just don’t have the whole view.
Our perspective is not even a real perspective,
arising out of the false self we made in opposition
to our Creator, arising from dissociation with Truth.
Egotistical thinking about God is meaningless.
Self- judgments are absurd.
Can the gnat’s vision describe the mountain?
Does a sleeping child see the moon?
We are gnat and child, incapable of appraising
what God made, what God is. And yet,
that same God is a Power and Presence
hidden within us, capable of feats and miracles,
complete in Knowledge and certainty of Self.
That part of us raps, can’t touch THAT!
because it is forever wholly True,
God knows Itself and knows Its Creation.
God and His Creation can’t be marred by doubt.
Hope is a choice.
We have real Thought, and are capable of real Appraisal.
We have the power to discern and decide.
We know beneficence and benevolence. We know love,
though we may not be able to explain it.
Yesterday I met the gaze of a young man, a stranger.
As I was leaving the gym our eyes met.
I smiled. We dove deep in holy gaze.
He grabbed my arm and said, will you come
with me to the International Church of Christ?
The dream of my heart has always been
a church of all nations, and the joining of
communities to realize Christ within.
Did he see that in me? What did he see?
His question held the hope of Spirit,
setting me free for an instant to ponder.
Sometimes strangers stop and stare and
dare to share the gifts of God awareness.
Sometimes we venture to speak of a love so deep
our lips part with kindness and inspiration.
As you doubt your goodness, your worth,
as you fall into depressing thoughts about
the absence of God in the world,
pause for a moment and switch frequencies.
Enter the Great Channel of the Mind of Holy Spirit.
This is the Mind that dwelt in Jesus, the Christ,
and was made clear to us in His ascension.
This is the true Judge of all creation,
having received from the Source of Life,
the perfection of Thought that understands
God and His Son, humanity and world.
This is the Great Ray of Light that illumines
our choices and decisions, and helps us remember
the Love that sustains us;
the Mother that holds us even now in an
everlasting constellation of care and completion.
This is the One who brings a world of strangers together
through the absence of fear and judgment.
This is the God who understands my lack of understanding;
Whose Sight I can share, Whose Sounds come forward
as I fold my authority to judge into His Authorship of Love;
as I accept His Light upon the world of my making.t
Perhaps we would do well, to give our
hearts over to the Wisdom of the part of us
capable of judging? This morning I simply ask,
are You there? Then I rest with awareness,
with a breath, with wonder for a God invisible,
and so clearly Present. Then I say,
if you are I’m available.