The Light in the Woods

#12 – THE LIGHT IN THE WOODS – JULY 2006

© Aubri Dennison 2006

7/4/06 Insights from Prayer         No one need ever to fear in their hearts – fear isn’t the rule of life, and joy isn’t the exception. We have the ability to unite with the source of all-love and all-power, no matter what circumstances we live under. To feed, clothe, and shelter the poor is good, but to pull them out of fear by bringing them the knowledge of their God and His availability to them, is the most basic form of evangelism.

7/6/06 Insights from Prayer           It’s amazing how, when you accept trials as learning experiences, things that normally would upset you become a means to draw close to God. The trials aren’t given to us by God for this purpose, but when evil and acceptance of evil bring our troubles about, God can provide the grace we need to overcome them. How angry the devil must get when this happens!

7/6/06 Insights from Study           We spend an enormous about of time and energy working against God without even knowing it. He has one vision for us; we have another. Mysticism teaches us that God’s vision for us, coming from an all-knowing creator, is the standard for what we should ourselves strive, no matter what the peer pressure of the worldly life suggests is best for us. Letting go and allowing God to do His work through us should be something we want to do – but the devil makes us feel like if we don’t take the responsibility for this we lose our freedom. We can’t take in the goodness of God, and so we can’t believe our lives can be better off by abandoning our wills to Him. What good is our free will to us if we don’t use it to our best advantage? The problem is that we don’t trust God enough to put ourselves in His hands. We don’t see the goalpost and have trouble believing that God does see it. The goalpost is not here in the realm that our earthly faculties can comprehend. It is in God’s kingdom, inaccessible to us without God’s help. All we have to do is accept that help, and not only will we gain eternal life in the presence of God, we’ll also recognize His presence here in us in this life, improving our tenure on earth immensely. Multiply that by the number of all of us, without exception, who are invited to experience God, and you can see what a wonderful world it could be. That is what God wants for us – we should work with Him towards that.

7/12/06 Reflections          Biting, clinging flies that swarm on me and drive me nearly crazy, though I curse them, are in their own way living the unitive relationship with God that I’m seeking so intently.

7/13/06 Reflections          I am not I – I am You. In my glory and in my embarrassment – I am You. In my beauty and in my ugliness; in my virtue and in my sin – I can only be what You need me to represent to the world at any moment. Jesus was shunned and ridiculed and tortured, but He was God throughout it all. People who look for God in a white robe on a heavenly cloud won’t find Him. He is here among us, no matter how bad we get. By example or by contrast, we are His hands and eyes; we should see Him when we look at each other. He is us.

7/15/06 Insights from Prayer           If you don’t get what you want, change what you want. That way you’ll always have hope. Better yet – want only what God wants and you’ll get it, and it’ll be perfect for you.

7/16/06 Reflections             Today’s Sabbath really brings home one of my greatest faults and one of my best learning opportunities. Every Sunday I’m all excited because I’ve made it clear that I must be left alone to devote the day to God. But it’s all about what I deem as devotions. I have a certain set of Bible verses I want to read; a certain set of prayers and meditations to do. Today, however, God ripped the control away from me and guided me to work and pray towards what He wants. I haven’t started my Bible reading – I haven’t even started my daily devotional readings. But I accomplished more and learned more about how God works that any other day of my life – simply by following God’s plan for my Sabbath instead of m own plan. And I even passed this lesson along to someone else in words that only God could have inspired. I may not be reading the inspired word of God, and I think I should feel guilty for this – but I’m writing the inspired word of God, and does it ever feel great!

7/18/06 Insights from Study        Jesus became man in order to reconcile man to God. Because of Him we became worthy to partner with God.

7/18/06 Presentations            We had lost my husband’s favorite hammer on the job, the hammer he had had for 35 years and couldn’t find a replacement for. It was a big deal, all the more so since the hammer could not be far from the job where we used it last. Mom said “Pray to St. Anthony; it works every time.” I said I didn’t believe in that. I went over to give one last look and of course I thought to myself “It couldn’t hurt!” and prayed to St. Anthony. Of course I found the hammer laying there in a spot where it wasn’t inconceivable that it should be. I don’t believe St. Anthony helped me find the hammer; I believe God did. And I don’t believe we should be ascribing miracles to mere mortals – all miracles are manifestations of God. But it occurred to me that it’s OK to ascribe it to St. Anthony if you’re sophisticated enough to realize that God can work His miracles through others, and seems to prefer to do it this way. He does it through people that I see every day so why not through St. Anthony? I feel qualified to be called spiritually sophisticated, but it bothers me that so many aren’t. So many bow down before statues of mortals and pray to them for favors – this strikes me as flirting with paganism and I want to get as far away from it as possible. But on a more ethereal level, I do see that God is not limited in how He performs miracles and I do see that He may want to work through the Communion of The Faithful – that body of living and dead who believe and who form the traditions we count on. After all, this is the single most important concept of Jesus in God’s plan. Just as long as we ascribe the miracles to the true author of them.

7/20/06 Insights from Study            I can’t obey everything in the Bible – I can’t even understand what it wants and sometimes it contradicts what it wants. And yet obeying God is one of my goals because it’s part of what God desires of me. That’s why I trust in Mysticism – I trust that God will speak to me what He wants me to hear because it’s me He loves. Reading scripture keeps me attuned to this, but is isn’t enough, or else God wouldn’t be speaking to me. We can’t absorb all His love – that is beyond our capabilities. But we can trust that there’s a purpose for us even with our limitations and that God’s desire for us is to one day live with Him and without the limitations life of earth. I don’t try to please God in order to win heaven – I try to please God because His promise of heaven makes me love and respect Him.

7/22/06 Insights from Study           If God hadn’t created evil along with the good we would have no free will. If we had nothing to choose between, we wouldn’t be made in the image of God.

7/23/06 Insights from Study             If God’s love is the only important thing to attain and God’s love is ever-present and all-bountiful, why should it be necessary to war among ourselves?

7/25/06 Insights from Study           I’m having trouble with Jesus because I can’t get past the thought that the religious elders of His time were right to vilify someone who claimed to be God. Isn’t this what drives the devil to do what he does? Isn’t that what God wanted when He exhorted us to not bow to idols?