May 9, 2013

[Note: First message since three kidnapped women were freed from a decade of captivity in Cleveland.]

• Faith is exercised most profoundly when tested

• Humans have the strength and power of light

• Your neighbor is God just as you are

God is with each of you on your paths. God is with each of you in your rejoicing, and God is with each of you in your sorrows and agonies. Since you have all been together the last time, you have learned much of the suffering of others, the sense of injustice, unfairness, bad luck, poor judgment, the dark energies that are a part of human life. It is easy at such times to wither away under the weight of such challenges, but it is precisely at such times that you are called upon in your own ways to exercise your faith, to exercise what you know to be true, to stand on the shoulders of your beliefs and cry out in prayer and cry out in actions and thoughts, in ways that indicate God’s presence in your midst. You’re asked to have faith always, but that faith is exercised most profoundly when it is tested.

Faith, the connection to spirit, is not a fair weather activity. It is not an issue of faith to acknowledge beauty. It is an issue of gratitude and thanksgiving. But faith is called upon at those times when you do not readily see the beauty in relationships, the beauty in society, the beauty in nature, the beauty of others, the beauty of opportunities. You are asked to be faithful because it is through your faith that your vision extends beyond what you experience. Indeed your vision extends far beyond what your eyes may provide.

We speak of the vision of faith as a commitment to the reality of God’s presence. With such a commitment, there is no space in life for despair. You may be saddened and hurt, but you are never desperate, for despair carries with it a sense of hopelessness, of powerlessness. But you are not hopeless. You are not powerless.

You are human beings. You are forces or centers of energy that contain within them the strength of light. Light has strength, and you are asked to be a part of that strength. You’re asked to embrace the light. You become most aware of the intensity of that light when you are surrounded by darkness. You are drawn to the light because of the darkness.

You are given the strength of light because you are each given the capacity to attract what is good. You are given the capacity to attract what is loving. It doesn’t mean that you are always good or always loving, but when you have the strength of light, your capability of drawing that energy and making it yours is undeniable.

When you are faced with an awareness of great suffering, of great tragedy, you can either be defeated by that awareness or strengthened. Being strengthened in the presence of great challenges may seem somehow illogical. When you are confronted by great personal or immediate sadness, you frequently feel physically weak, but you have within you the capability of facing such suffering that may be around you with a renewed strength, a renewed commitment to reflect your understanding of God in the presence of the situation that you encounter.

God’s strength is most apparent in the darkness. The beam of light that shines in the total blackness of night seems far more powerful than the same light beam illuminated in the presence of sunlight. The light is the same, but your perception of it is altered. To become the strength of light, you must allow your awareness to be such that when it is filled with darkness around you, the light may seem nearly blinding in its presence.

The light is always with you because God is always with you. There is no difference. Just as you cannot fully hide from light, you cannot fully hide from God. Allow that presence of God to become penetrating when you are surrounded by the darkness of loss, frustration, sympathy for others, or your own personal challenges. When you hear of so many losses of life, when you hear of the unspeakable suffering that others experience, it is in those times that the light shines so prominently. You are able to see the light because of the darkness.

How do you respond when you are surrounded by what you perceive to be darkness? You can choose to be lost in the dark, or you can choose to be drawn to the light. That is a choice that all human beings have. You can be overwhelmed by despair, the lack of hope, the lack of faith, or you can be overwhelmed by the intense brightness that gives evidence of the Presence that you all seek. The darkness that you encounter need not necessarily involve the suffering of countless others. It may rather involve the suffering of someone you know—a close friend, a family member, or yourselves. The response to the light can still be the same.

The lighthouse traditionally had little purpose in the middle of the day with good visibility, but the lighthouse was always there. When the weather turned foul and the day turned to night, the lighthouse was a lifesaver.

Each of you has within you the power of light, for when others experience darkness, you can provide the light. How you provide this differs from person to person. For many, it is prayer. For others, it is some kind of action. Each of you must determine your own response to what you perceive is a great need. Whatever your response, you cannot deny its potential to strengthen, uplift, support, encourage, comfort. Your response grows in its effectiveness by its very exercise of being present.

The response to others is not unlike the muscle. The muscle is strengthened by use, not weakened. The muscle is given purpose through its use, not

through its abandonment. The might serves as a light because without it there is darkness. You serve as a reflection of God because without that reflection, there is no sight of God.

All human beings are a part of God’s response. God is not merely a force in some location that steps in and rescues. The force that steps in is you, and it’s you who become the power of light. The power is your power. The light truly becomes your light.

If you ask to see God, look to your neighbor, for your neighbor is God just as you are. You may not be aware of the goodness of your neighbor. You may not be aware of the manifestation of love by your neighbor, but that goodness, the manifestation of love, does exist somewhere within. By your responding to your neighbor with love through your thoughts and prayers, you are connecting to that part of your neighbor that is the manifestation of God. If you hold another to a potential that is greatly diminished, that other person most likely will respond with equally diminished potential. But if you hold another in light and acknowledge the potential for greatness, for loving understanding, that individual ultimately will reflect what you held in your thoughts, in your mind, in your attitude toward the other.

Expect the best from everyone, but when you don’t see evidence of the best, it doesn’t mean the best does not exist, but that it is somehow unseen. We can assure you that “the best” as you describe it, being a manifestation of God, is always present. The most hardened criminal you can imagine contains the best. The person who has committed heinous crimes contains the best, contains the spark of God, contains the light—in fact, is the light.

We insist that each of you is that light, but we also insist that you may not always express that light. Those who are saintly are capable of unsaintly deeds, but such deeds do not deny the saintliness, the sacredness, the godliness of each of you. You are so often asked not to be judgmental, and you understand that what is meant by that is not to be judgmental of the worthiness of an individual, even though you can simultaneously criticize someone’s actions. But the reason we keep asking you to focus on what is good and not what is in darkness is because in focusing on the good in every human being, you are becoming God’s light. You are exercising the power of the light that is your own life. And in exercising the power, as with the muscle, you strengthen it.

Those whom you know who seem to reflect so much that is good do so not by accident. It is by practice. It is by attention. It is by commitment. If you are committed to living a life of light, every small response you make that reflects that light strengthens at the same time. The light becomes stronger with use, and the darkness is reduced.

Accept that you are not always going to reflect the light you wish to be or the light that is contained within, but find opportunities when you are surrounded by darkness to be a light that attracts other lights, and in that attraction multiplies many times the intensity of light. Collectively you are then God. You are not merely an organism that exists on your planet through some accidental means. You are given life to live. You are given the power of light to exercise that power. You are given the capability of seeing the light in the midst of darkness.

Our presence in your lives is much like the light in the darkness. It is when you are aware of suffering that you can allow yourselves the vision to see the overwhelming presence of God’s light and the undeniable reality of an all-encompassing and caring love. You are blessed in that light. You are blessed as the light. And you are surrounded at all times by the loving strength of that light, God.

Amen.