December 10, 2009

• God’s comfort

God, who is your mother, father, brother, sister, child, and creator, embraces you with love, with care, and with constant comfort.

We wish to talk with you more about God’s comfort. You know much about God’s love, although you are aware of a mere speck of its totality, but each of you has more immediate needs in terms of your understanding of comfort offered through the presence of that Spirit Center you call God.

What is comfort other than a sense of belonging, a sense that somehow you are where you need to be and that is where you must be? It is a need you feel in the “must” portion. It is the rightness place of that. When you seek comfort, you seek relief from what brings pain and anxiety, what brings concern, worry, uncertainty. Comfort is where you feel safe. Comfort is where you feel accepted. Comfort is where you feel welcome. All of these descriptions of comfort carry with them a human characteristic, but there is more to the sense of comfort that few give great thought to, and that is the comfort that comes from an acknowledgement of the very existence of a Creator. When you accept the reality that there is a Creator, that being a large step of faith, then it becomes easier to accept the reality that if there is a Creator, there is a Creator for all that you need, whether that need be physical, emotional, whatever you perceive as missing in your lives. The belief of a Creator leads to a recognition that what is needed has been created. Whatever is needed is, not will be, or was…is.

When you go in your thoughts to a place of comfort, the comfort may be physical, but it is more profoundly felt emotionally: that sense of belonging, the recognition of non-judgment, the recognition of full acceptance. To understand something of God’s love, you must be aware of the condition of comfort as it relates to your place in that totality of creation.

You are comfortable in your faith when you accept that God is never judgmental. There is nothing that you can do or fail to do that will lead to being judged. This is an absolute truth. There are many of differing faiths that are based on one level or another upon a sense of ultimate judgment. For those who believe in judgment, their lives may be guided somewhat in fear. They may be colored by guilt or regret. The result of those responses may be the desire to reach out, to be loving, to be compassionate, to be understanding, and in so doing, those individuals may become loving, compassionate and understanding, and that is all good. But the truth remains that being loving and understanding and compassionate is really being reflective of God’s environment of loving, compassionate understanding. There is no judgment.

You wish to reflect God truly, then you can never be judgmental—judgmental towards others, judgmental towards yourselves. Existing in a community that is nonjudgmental is existing in a community of comfort. If you truly believe in the nonjudgmental reality of God, then you can become comfortable in that reality, for there is no place for fear and guilt, no place for animosity, no place for competition. Your relationship to God is therefore one of comfort. Being comfortable in a relationship does not mean taking a relationship for granted and thereby lessening its impact. Being comfortable in your relationship to God means accepting that reality of the Spirit Center, that reality that is not just loving, but Love, the Ultimate Reality.

Some human beings say they are comfortable in their faith, and what they often mean is they feel their faith is the correct faith. The comfort we refer to is not a comfort of smugness, a comfort of self-confidence. It is a comfort of loving ease, a comfort of faith, a comfort that is a spiritual peace. You can be comfortable in your faith and yet uncertain of where it will lead. Having faith requires an acceptance of uncertainty, for if you are certain of details regarding beliefs in God, then you no longer belong in a category of faith. Those who are the most faithful can be those with the fewest answers, and yet there is a confidence that what they do not know for sure is nevertheless no justification for judgment of self or judgment of others. Those who have faith ask. Those who have faith seek. Those who have faith act without full knowledge, but with a belief that somehow God Is and somehow they matter. You can exist in a comfortable environment without knowing all the answers.

If you are comfortable in a family, then you have faith that if, for some reason, you do something that is against what the family stands for, then you will still be loved and accepted and welcomed and valued. This is what comfort is. This is the reality of God’s relationship to you, and it is your great challenge in life to help make this the reality of your relationship to God. As a result, we can say seek comfort. Seek what is comforting. Seek a relationship with your neighbor, with friends, with family, with yourself that encourages comfort and acceptance.

You are where you are for the very reason that you are where you must be. Your lives are as your lives must be for you in this reality. Your lives are not where others must be, for they are currently where they must be. The interactions you have with others are the interactions you must experience. They may be interactions that are not comfortable. You may feel threatened at work or in relationships or in your sense of self, but those connections are appropriate. They are not permanent, but they are appropriate.

There is nothing in your lives that exists that should not be there. This is a strong statement that carries with it many questions. Is it right for children to suffer? It is not God’s will that children suffer per se, but in that suffering there is much to be gained by the child, by the environment that creates that suffering. We do not suggest that you all must suffer. We do not suggest that there is some kind of glee when many people suffer. There is no joy among the spirits when people suffer terribly from acts of nature, and yet the individuals who experience great tragedy are part of the fabric of all that exists and are equally important. They are not singled out to suffer. You are not singled out to be ill, but your suffering, the illnesses that you experience, are part of the fabric of growth, are part of the fabric of spiritual development, are part of the fabric that leads to an understanding of what it means to be comfortable.

Where is the comfort in the suffering? The comfort is in the loving experience at the hands of another, the nonjudgmental, compassionate response of another, physically, verbally, through prayer. It is in receiving that loving, compassionate, comforting presence that you are all given peace. It is in such experiences that you learn to be a comforting presence for another.

If you wish to know what it means to be loving toward another, consider the enormous gift of being nonjudgmental, of being simply accepting. If you wish to know the power of comfort in your lives, strive to be accepting of who you are. Strive to be accepting of all others. Strive to be accepting of the reality of all that belongs to human life. Accepting that reality does not mean being complacent. Accepting rather means being willing to see what occurs as being somehow through faith part of what it means to belong to the creative force that is God.

You must seek your family of comfort. You must seek your place of comfort. You must devote your lives to progressing along your path with no sense of judgment. All that lies on your path belongs on your path. The blades of grass belong as equally important as the large boulders you are asked to get around. The boulders have no less significance than the blades of grass. Accepting them is enabling yourselves, through faith in what you don’t know, to be comfortable with every step of your human journeys. The example of God as the source and power of nonjudgmental love is thereby the example that each of you can emulate, not out of obligation, but out of faith.

Be faithful toward what you do not know. Be faithful toward others who are strangers. Be faithful in your uncertainties, and the comfort that is God will become yours.

We bless you in that comfort. We bless you in your seeking. We bless you in your uncertainties. We bless you in your fears. We bless you in your faith.

Amen.