February 21, 2011

• God as Comforter

• Dealing with grief

God stands next to each of you. God resides within each of you. God is the light that you radiate outward. God is the love you offer. God is the peace that you become. God is all these things, but in many ways is experienced by human beings as a comforter.

When you ask for God’s peace, when you ask to be shown God’s grace, you are asking for comfort. When you ask to know God’s love, you’re asking for comfort. When you pray for another, you’re asking that another be open to God’s comfort. Yes, what you receive is God’s love, but it is most poignantly felt through comfort—the comfort of compassion, the comfort of an embrace, the comfort of a listening ear, the comfort of an open mind, the comfort that comes from compassion, from sharing, from giving and receiving. Much of your experience of God’s love is a kind of comfort. It is love, of course, but love carries so many dimensions. On our plane of life, we experience the love of God in ways far broader than comfort, but all human beings seek comfort.

The kind of comfort that is sought differs from individual to individual. For some, that comfort exists in the financial sense. For others, in companionship. For others, a sense of purpose. For still others, a feeling of being needed. The experience of comfort is so broad, but it is this sense of love, providing sustenance and support and encouragement, that is so much a part of what characterizes all human life. You may differ enormously in your experience of life—what you see on the outside, what happens on a day to day basis—but you have similar needs that exist under the umbrella of comfort. That is your experience of love.

You may not think of comfort as directly related to creation, but the simple re- creation of the smallest entity is a kind of manifestation of love that you may not identify specifically as comfort. We see the creation of all that is as a manifestation of love. The creation of minerals, of water, air—all that serve as nutrients to life—belongs to the exercise of love, yet so few human beings think of love in that way. It is for that reason that we identify much of what you seek as a form of comfort. Health—when you pray that God’s beneficial presence can aid someone in great need physically, you are praying for comfort. All that you do on behalf of another that is a manifestation of love brings comfort, brings a sense of peace.

When you lose someone you love dearly, you lose a part of what you feel provides stability and warmth and affirmation. You lose what it means to really share— sharing other experiences and sharing of yourself. Being left behind, so to speak, is being denied a part of what you experience as love, and it is expected and natural that you feel somehow, and in a significant way, diminished. There is no question that when you lose what you love that you feel in that loss a diminution of who you are. When an important component of your life is the giving of who you are to another, that giving is an essential ingredient in the experience of selfless love. When that opportunity is removed, then that manifestation of nonjudgmental, all-accepting love is derailed.

It is always difficult to be left behind, for that which you love is no longer directly encountered by your senses. It is at this point that your faith can expand, that your faith is asked to fully embrace what your senses are incapable of experiencing. You are being asked to embrace what is unseen.

It is understandable for every human being to reach a point when you say you are tired of growing, that you would like to just be and be in the moment and allow that moment to fill you. That is okay. Those places along your life’s pathway that call out and say, “Wait, slow down, and just be,” are in themselves most important. You have an expression of “slow down and smell the roses”—smell the flowers, somehow to find value in what is, and reduce your anxiety related to what was or what may be.

The gift of the present is indeed a poignant gift of God. It is not what creates your awareness of the present, but it is the very act of being in the present that is the gift. When you are filled with grief, allow yourself to experience it. To deny it is denying the reality of what is. Just as you do not deny the reality of joy, so can you not deny the reality of grief. That grief carries with it a deep awareness of God. It is not during such an awareness through grief that you may necessarily recognize the goodness in God, but you have brought the awareness into the current reality, and it is that increased vision of God being somehow a part of your lives that ultimately deepens your perception of God being continually a part of your lives.

If you live in a dark room and are taken outside into the sunlight for the first time, the sunlight will seem blinding and overwhelming. The sudden sunlight can seem painful and something to be avoided, and yet in time you soon recognize the life-giving capacity of the sun. You begin to realize the warmth that is provided by the sun. You begin to see the beauty around you that is illuminated by the sun. So what seems painful and overwhelming initially can be deeply affirming and supportive with the passage of time. Such passage does not deny the existence of the sun, but changes your perception of it.

So it is with all aspects of life. What seems at the moment overwhelming and crushing may be transformed into something of great value and importance—indeed, a kind of nourishment. For those who are left behind when someone joins us, that evolving metamorphosis, from what is overwhelming to what is accepted and valued, becomes a process that impacts all levels of life.

For human beings the separation is painful, upsetting, creating feelings of loss, loneliness, deprivation, but we can also say that such is the experience of many upon joining our form of life. They find a sense of bewilderment, loss of what they have come to know and value. They’re blinded by the light of Love, and there is a period of adjustment until they fully acknowledge the beauty and warmth of what they now experience.

As you know, the transition for the member of your group was smooth. There was no sense of complete bewilderment. There was no sense of being overwhelmed by the light, for much that he experienced in his human form prepared him for his transition to us.

There is little in general that many people are engaged in that truly prepares them to be left behind. Most find the period of loss to be a pain that is shared not alone but with others around them. The pain nevertheless exists, but just as the spirit finds the light, adapts to it, and grows on our side, so it can on your side. Your spirit feels the loss, but your spirit also learns to grow and strengthen and find affirmation and forms of giving and receiving love.

Life is always transforming. Your experience as a child is much different from your life experience as an adult, and if you had suddenly become an adult directly from childhood, you would have rebelled and resisted and felt an enormous loss. The beauty of life in part is recognized through your ability to evolve. You experience adulthood through your evolution as a child. That sense of growth, that experience of becoming, is shared by all. That same sense of becoming belongs to the experience of loss. You who go through loss are also deeply involved in the act of becoming, and what you become is an entity of pure love. Human life is a process of becoming. Our lives in pure spirit are a process of becoming, for we grow, we evolve, we become more and more pure love. We become a kind of life far different from our human experience. So the act of becoming is continuous.

In your evolving change, there are invariably losses. Sometimes those losses are the result of change. Sometimes the change is the result of losses. Both are closely intertwined. Both are necessary. We know of your prayers for the deceased’s loved ones. We know of your prayers for all who suffer. We know your prayers for all who struggle for human dignity. Your prayers strengthen the evolving nature of loving beings. Your prayers are a part of that evolution. We can indeed say your prayers are essential to that.

Your growth, your development as human beings, is not accomplished merely through your own efforts. You grow not by your prayers alone, but by the prayers of others for you. You grow not through your merits, but through the love given by others. A plant does not burst forward merely because it exists. It grows because it is nourished. The source of that nourishment is broad. It is never from a single point.

Consider your growth as adults as a product of the love that has been offered to you by others, and that loving offering is God reaching out to you through the hands and hearts of others. Your prayers therefore are part of that process. Your prayers always make a difference. There is no prayer that is unanswered. There are only prayers unrecognized by other human beings. Whether recognized or not, the prayers’ loving benefits are unfailing.

We pray for you, even when you are unaware of our presence. Those prayers are still for you, and you benefit by those prayers. You benefit by the prayers of others whom you have no awareness of. You may not be aware of the individual, and you may not be aware of their prayers, but the benefit, the light, the nourishment, the love are present.

Find reason in your daily lives to welcome the energy received by the prayers of others. You do not have to know who prays for you, but just ask God’s help that you may have the vision to recognize the power, the love and light that is directed toward you from so many sources. Be sustained by that love, be sustained by that light, and be sustained by the knowledge that God stands beside you every step along your pathway. Find joy in the acknowledgment of God, and in so doing, you will find peace and strength in your times of loss, grief, or fear.

God is with you. Rest in God’s peace always.

Amen.