GOD, THE DELIVERER

Living on the Spiritual Basis, we have placed our reliance on a power greater than ourselves. This is not an overnight matter nor do we arrive at the point of willingness typically without pain and discomfort. Facing a seemingly insurmountable challenge in life, we found our back against the wall, all secular answers and escape routes tried or closed off. We were beset on all sides by fear and perceived negative outcome. From this nadir of experience, the spark of faith burst into life. In truth it was always there, buried under conventional thinking and secular beliefs. When faced with the insurmountable, having exhausted the conventional, we are left with the unconventional, the unseen power at the heart of everything and everyone. We begin to pray. Perhaps we have not prayed in years or were raised with a form of humanist spirituality so popular in “enlightened society” today and have never prayed in a religious sense. Perhaps we believed ourselves to be agnostic or a conversational atheist and left the question of God simmering on a back burner, only to find life has turned up the heat and the pot is bubbling forefront.

We are alone, lost, though we may be surrounded by people mouthing the usual platitudes, we feel trapped, the walls closing in, no way out. So we pray. We make sure we are alone, unseen. We feel guilty, hypocritical for all those times we belittled those holy rollers on TV, for feeling ourselves superior to those weak willed church goers, having engaged in schadenfreude when a religious figure fell from favor. However, we are at the court of last resort, so we pray.

From this moment of trepidation, one book closes and a new one opens. We quickly find that god does not make to hard terms for those who earnestly seek. That God will make himself known to us, as soon as we ask. The Great Carpenter taught that upon this mustard seeds worth of belief, a strong deeply rooted spiritual life could be grown. Your job is to remain open minded, honest with yourself, willing to listen and learn and amazing changes will take place within your consciousness.

Having stepped on to this path, does it mean our prayers are answered in the manner we outline? No. All prayers are answered in the positive, but our vision is limited while God’s is not. I do not, although I may think I do, know what is best for you or me. Spiritual hindsight has shown me that many of the things I prayed for, had they been delivered as I ordered them, would have caused more trouble and problems down the road. God never answers a prayer that results in negative consequences. I have the same questions as you, sickness, suffering and death of children. Good people suffering or the seeming randomness of accidents and disasters. Why? What I know, from experience, is that prayer works. The greater questions we share we can explore together for there are many great teachers and books to read and study. Will we ever know all the answers? Probably not. However, the day will come when this fleshy conveyance will fail, and freed from its restrictions we will be able to sit at the feet of all knowledge and power and pose those questions. At that time, just as on this side of the vale, God will Deliver.