Greatful Prayer

Grateful Prayer

            Prayer: asking God to satisfy a desire, full a need, heal a sickness; to do something; send something; provide security and better conditions, is an outright insult to our heavenly Father.

            You pray long and hard. You pray humbly on your knees. You are sincere and meek, you don’t ask for excesses, only for what is necessary. Mostly for health and happy relationships. Yet, you are still sick and your relationships remain broken. Why?

            Simple! You don’t know the God that you are praying to! You are still praying to a sky God. A huge man, with a long beard, sitting on a golden throne, writing all of your sins in a heavy book. You can’t be sure what His mood of the day will be. Will He be angry or compassionate? Will He intervene on your behalf or ignore your plea for someone who begs louder?

            “Don’t be ridiculous. No one thinks like that anymore.”

            All right…but don’t you pray to a God outside yourself? And sometimes you think that God requires a channel, a teacher or healer or a special place, like a church or a ritual, which must be performed, before he is ready to act on your behalf? Maybe you call on Mary or Jesus to plead your case?

`           My question is: what can you ask from God that He has not already supplied you with? You are asking God to be God, isn’t that being a little presumptuous?

            You claim to believe in One God: One Power: the Creator of the universe and everything good that exists in it. What does that make the devil?  A God created enemy of man and God? Doctor Frankenstein created a monster that turned on him. Did God make a mistake? Is there a power opposed to God that He must constantly fight and sometimes loose the battle? Then how can He be the only Power? There are problems in this life. That was the reason for your prayer. Is Satan or God to blame? Neither. You are!

            In the first place don’t look for God outside yourself. God is closer that hands and feet. As available as the air that you breathe. He is your life. ”The kingdom of God is within you.” Remember reading this in the Bible? Do you believe it? Then live the joy of it!

            In the second place in all of infinity there is nothing but good. How can it be otherwise? God is infinite Good. The devil? Satan? Prince of darkness? Nothing more than the doubt; the fear; the superstitious fantasy of an idolatrous mind: and believed by other people who don’t think about what they believe. They see problems and therefore it has to be real and caused by something. Which it isn’t real. It is caused by imagination or illusion and can’t cause you any more harm than a shadow on the wall. A devil opposed to God, they said. That way they are not to blame. It was beyond their control.

            Then they conjured up a devil, with horns, a tail and a pitchfork with which to prod and poke and torment the helpless. Then he sends the grim reaper to finish the job and your miserable life on earth is over. Is this what you think God intended for His beloved children?

            When you know the truth about the God you worship: you will know that even if evil was factual and a force to be reckoned with; our Father-Mother-God would allow nothing to harm you. There was nothing created by God that you should fear in any form. Not sickness, not sin, not death. Then you can say with our older brother, Jesus, “I and my Father are one.”

            Your prayers will be grateful, joyous and praise for the blessings received and no longer begging for crumbs.            

            649 words                Loretta Ellen Edwards