November 20, 1981

• Function of prayer

• Emphasize commonality with others as the body of God

• Accept challenges as opportunities

God is with you this evening and responds to each of your needs as they have been spoken and as they have been expressed within. Each of you is experiencing strong emotions. It is not a neutral time in your lives but one filled with ambitions and concerns, feelings of joy and frustration. God knows all of your feelings and is like a great physician who can diagnose and prescribe and comfort.

You must be reminded that it is God who placed you in this life, in this picture. When you find yourselves at a crossroads, it is God who placed you there, and it is God who will lead you on the proper path. If you wish to be open to guidance, be ready to accept it as it is offered. It may be through a sense of commitment. It may be through the voice of another. It may be through a perceived voice from within, but God’s guidance will always be offered if you pray for it. It will never be denied

God works in life through so many myriad ways. We have referred to them many times, but it is nevertheless important to be reminded of the need for flexibility in your perceptions of God and in the nature of your responses to God. God works through others. God expresses love through others. We see your gratitude to those around you who have reflected God’s love, but think for a moment how that love is given. It may be merely a look, perhaps one word which is spoken, the touch of someone. These are tangible ways, but you must not overlook the intangible. God works through the prayers of others. You do not hear those prayers, but you benefit from them. The prayers are offered to God with the desire of asking God to respond to another. The truth is that God responds to another soul because God is God and not specifically because you ask God to respond.

This is a difficult concept to put across to you, for you all know of the essential need for praying to God. You all know when you ask God for help, help is forthcoming. You all know that when you pray to God for help for yourself, that help comes. All of this is true, but it does not imply the reverse: namely if you do not ask God to help, God won’t. God serves you as you serve God. A parent is concerned about the well-being of a child. The child does not need to say, “Be concerned.” The concern is there. The child does not say, “Love me,” or “Love my sister,” for the child is loved.

Why then do you pray? Why then do you ask God to step in and give support to another? When you approach God through prayer, your prayers serve to open the lines of communication, to clear the channel so that you are enabled to be the recipient of God’s love, to be the recipient of God’s care and guidance. The response is there, but it is difficult for you to sense that unless you are really open.

In addition to being open yourselves, each of you has the power to open the channel of others, to clear away the debris, the fog, the murky light. That is another aspect of prayer. When you pray for God to heal another, you are actually praying for God’s healing power to reach another. You are not asking God to heal. You are not asking God to comfort. You are asking that another may be comforted, may be healed. That is opening the channel and that is why we can say that God can heal, that God can comfort, that God can guide even when you, as the recipient, do not ask for it. God does not lie idly by waiting to be a good servant. God is constantly attentive, constantly reaching out, but you must be aware of that. Therefore, when you pray, do not feel that you are in some way activating God. You are only allowing God to come through.

In addition, when you pray to God, you are enabling yourselves to become more effective in being God’s hands. If you pray that somehow comfort may be brought to another, you are enabling yourself to serve as a comforter. If you were not praying for another, you would not be so sensitive to another’s needs. The mere act of praying is indicative of your sensitivity. It is indicative of your sense of direction—one of reaching toward another, of wishing to help another. So prayer serves this function, too.

As you gather in a circle, you are open to share one another’s needs and joys. By praying for each other, you are directing your activities toward another. You are serving at that time as a hand of God. You are reflecting God directly. There is a special closeness to the circle. There is a commonness of purpose, but a divergence of perception. God’s words to you in the last communion particularly address this reality. But each of you, while being aware of your differences, must seek to emphasize your unity and must find ways of expressing that unity. The fact that you are together in prayer, wishing to learn more of God, is a unifying element in each of your lives, but you must also respond to one another with a sense of unity while recognizing differences.

That is what should happen in all of your contacts. Each of you is active in the world with others whose perception of God is markedly different from your own, whose experience of God shares little in common with yours. It is easy to be critical. It is easy to recognize those differences and difficult to find bonds of unity. But if you are to fully develop spiritually, you must seek ways of identifying the common bonds which unite each of you with all others. If one inflicts harm emotionally or spiritually, physically, that person is still united with you. There is still a common factor which relates you to one another. It is in the recognition of that commonality that you can learn to respond positively and thereby help the other.

In helping the other through that common recognition, you grow also. We say so often that you grow only as others grow. It is easy to recognize the meaning of God’s statement, but it is infinitely difficult to apply its meaning. It is easy to respond to others positively when all goes well. It is very difficult when your relationships to others are dominated by your sense of self. The preoccupation with self serves as a barrier. It is a wall which separates you from whatever lies beyond your selves. In order to be able to respond positively, constructively, toward another, you must eliminate that sense of self which is fed by pride and vanity.

Selfishness does not mean merely greed or the desire to be better than another. Selfishness in its broadest sense is the attitude of putting oneself first. God does not put God first, and yet God is all-powerful. Why should you? God’s self-perception is not as more important than you. Why should you cultivate a sense of heightened importance? God created you as equals to one another and as a part of God.

Since you all share the same common spark of divinity, none can be more important than another. Therefore, in providing you with the ability to accept others, God has given you a recognition of what that unifying bond is. That bond is God. That bond is your special place with God. The bond is the fact that you are God’s hands in the world and God’s eyes, arms and heart. All of you collectively are the body of God, and all are equally important.

You must each learn to be patient and must be willing to accept challenges— challenges to your faith, challenges to a sense of self-worth, challenges in your patience to accept life as it is, challenges to be courageous, challenges to dare to love, challenges to be open to God’s answers to prayers, challenges to God’s guidance. All this is a part of life. It is what life is about. It is the exercise of life which nurtures the soul, and it is the soul which gives meaning to life.

When times are difficult and when you are beset by concerns, believe firmly that you do not face those issues by accident. Be willing to accept that God has placed you in those circumstances and have faith in God’s ability and desire to provide strength and guidance. Remember that your prayers do not set God into motion, for God has already responded. Remember that your prayers are a way of opening yourselves to God’s response.

We see positive resolutions to each of your concerns. That is not to say that all will go as you expect or as you may hope. God’s presence in your lives will be felt, however. You will recognize that through all that you go through, all that you endure, all that you are faced with, you are bathed in God’s light. You are never in shadow. You are always under God’s gaze and within the arms of God. We transmit to each of you God’s sense of peace, blessing of hope, and gift of love.

Amen.