August 24, 2021

• How to respond during a pandemic

• Comforting words on the passing of a dear friend

It is God, and it has always been God. It is your guides, and it has always been your guides. The Spirit Center to whom you pray individually and collectively is responsive to all your needs and concerns, even when you are not aware of them. We say with clarity that God is not responding when you ask for a response, for the reality of God is a presence. It is not a response but simply a presence. When you pray for God’s intervention, you are praying for your own openness.

You ask at this time to know a response to the pandemic, to threats that you feel personally and collectively. It is not for God to respond, but rather in the praying, you are empowering your response. The insight that you seek is in truth not merely God’s insight but yours. In praying, you will find more insight becomes a reality in your daily lives.

For each of you, that for which you pray will become a reality in different forms. You seek a clearer understanding for how to respond when you sense a threat from others that may impact you individually or collectively. That response will be different for everyone, but what is appropriate for all is committing yourselves personally or collectively to what is of benefit to others. That is in fact what is best.

How can those actions be identified? They may be through a commitment of one’s energies or talents. It may be by speaking to others. It may be by writing, requesting, urging, or explaining your perceptions of what can be done. Making a global impact really means making a local commitment. There are some things that you can commit to through your own personal understanding, your own personal experiences. It is fully appropriate and reflective of God’s presence in your lives that you wish to reach out in some way to make a difference.

It is in part through such outreach that you address the experience of fear or anger. Fear is often motivated by a sense of helplessness, of feeling that somehow whatever threat is perceived is felt to be uncontrollable. There is a kind of victim quality to feeling threatened. Certainly, it is a part of the human experience to deal with fear, fear for oneself and fear for others. But the most helpful response to such feelings is a reaching outward to do what you can do. If what you can do is local, that is every bit as meaningful as what you do on a more global basis. The fact is, you are reaching out, and that outreach is one helpful and important way of dealing with the fears and angers that are felt on so many levels.

You can remove the specific concerns of which you have spoken, Covid and the behavior of those within the realm of a Covid response. Think for a moment of other ways of experiencing fear and anger. When you are surrounded by a sense of helplessness, those fears and angers, those irritations, those frustrations multiply. They multiply out of inaction, often generated by a belief that no action is truly available.

Find ways to reach out. Whatever you face that creates anxiety, look for ways that you individually can respond. Nothing that you encounter in human life happens in the absence of any possible response. It can be that what you fear will not entirely dissipate, but the impact of that fear can be lessened, and you can find strength through that lessening. If you have concerns about your own health, and you pray to God for relief of those concerns, you are praying in fact for insight of what you can do. That which you can do, that which others around you can do may lessen the impact of those concerns. Of course, those things in your lives that cause your concerns can completely disappear, but the goal of opening yourselves to God’s presence is that in so doing, you are seeing an appropriate response.

Much of human life is characterized by response. That response may be social, medical, any number of responses. You have concerns about relationships. Praying to God for resolution means being open to your responses to those relationships. You have seen examples in your own life and in the lives of others of the power of that response as a means of lessening the burden. When you observe acts of courage, you’re observing responses to situations that may almost seem hopeless, that may seem impossible to deal with.

Courage is the acknowledgement of the appropriate response and a commitment to its exercise. That is the presence of God in action when the need is felt to be so critical. There is no reason to feel that whatever responses you become aware of to address concerns that you may have, whether they relate to Covid or other responses or challenges, your growth, your strengthening, your deepening, your connection with the Spirit Center, God, is strong. How you characterize those responses as being large or small, significant or seemingly less so, is not so important. What is important is that you find ways of becoming and remaining engaged in whatever you feel is your calling.

There is no single response of God that is appropriate for all, for you are not asking or cajoling God to step in. You are stepping in in whatever way is revealed to you. Your frustrations as they relate to the responses of many toward this worldwide crisis is certainly understandable. It is not to be shunned. It is not something to feel guilt over. It is the most natural reaction to experience when you encounter forces that seem to you to be fully unjustified and destructive. God’s presence is a part of your response. God’s presence can be reflected in how you respond. You can always be assured that that response is appropriate for you when you are engaged in the commitment of an open heart reaching outward through those concentric circles of which we have spoken.

Your open heart reaches outward to a dear friend with loving concern for his recent passing and the relief of longtime suffering. His spirit is with us. He has gone through much in his human life, and he is resting in a loving, comforting, healing light. He is fully aware of this light. He’s aware of his guides. He’s aware of his family and friends. He is completely free of any burdens of the body. His spirit soars in its freedom as it gains strength. He is finding great peace. The strength that he demonstrated and exercised in his human form gives him great strength as he continues to open to the light that surrounds him. Some souls have some difficulty in the transition from human life to the life of spirit. However, his transition is smooth, steady, and filled with unimaginable love. Prayers for his well-being are always helpful.

Prayers for the well-being of all whom you have known and loved in human form will always be felt. Those prayers that you offer are a response given out through an open heart. The vision of spirit, that heart vision, is a clear and direct channel between all in human form and all in spirit. Your human lives are devoted primarily to the opening of that heart vision. All that we, your guides, work toward in our loving service to you is directed for the purpose of opening your hearts so that you may see God’s presence.

We bless each of you with every effort you make to open your hearts. We bless each of you and every effort you make to find God’s response within you so that you become indeed the heart, the hands, the love of God’s presence. Be comforted, be guided, be affirmed in the light.

Amen.