Meditating to Heal

I have an unsettling reality that at the same time frightens and lifts me to heights I have never before attained. I know that God is with me in Spirit, always; God is also with all others at the same time. This is a most-trusted gift that I realize, and I must share equally. As a human, I am the pure expression of God’s presence within me; this is called my soul, or should I say God’s Pure Possession within me. I am the human projection of Soul, and Soul is the substance of God, of Life, of Wisdom in man both individually and universally.

John (14:12) reminds us that Jesus promised that if we truly believe in Him as the Son of God, we will also do the works that he does. Life, Truth, and Love are the realities of the teachings of Jesus. They grow in Faith and spiritual understanding that God is the eternal healer. Jesus wants us to imitate Him, which is possible by the presence of God all around and all within us. God wants the incarnation to continue, and we through faith are the disciples of Jesus.

I praise and love God, but, and this is very important, I trust God. He gives me inner peace, a lasting peace that is overwhelmingly the best part of me. God’s Love is timeless! As I concentrate on my spiritual direction, as I meditate and pray to and for God, conversation between us ebbs and flows. There are innumerable periods of silence. It is in these interludes that I hear the voice of God, the tiny inner voice that attaches my soul and heart to my desires to serve Humanity, God’s Holy Creation.

I pray for the welfare and healing of my friends; I pray for the welfare and healing of my unknown friends. This is my overwhelming joy. When I am truly feeling distraught, as I pray for others, my own condition brightens. Prayer is the simplest joy of life; it is also the basic joy of life for it brings God’s Love within.

God’s responds with precious gifts when we pray, but only when prayer is shared. Prayer brings me peace within.

© Russell Kendall Carter

The Sermon on the Mount is without a doubt the most interesting and most important sermon ever offered for mankind. The forgiveness that Jesus offers us is stirring! there are no threats to our self-recognition, our weaknesses, or even our positions in society. There is not even a moral lesson to it unless you include the promise of eternal forgiveness.

Add the promises given in the prayer He teaches us, and we find a guiding light for our lives. As long as we live, from childhood to old age, we are comforted and blessed by the promises given us, the promises we make to God, and the promises we make to our fellow humanity. Whomever walks in God’s light walks on a path of service to others. The blessing of this is of course the presence to God within us always.

The beauty of this is that by walking on the lighted path of service, we have the power of God in our hands. Nothing can surpass or deflect our efforts to help others. Nothing is more beautiful than a church of like-minded human beings in service to the less advantaged surrounding us, and there are too many for us, but not too many when we do the work of God.

We call on the power of God to heal us when in poor health of body or mind. We can also call on His power to heal the rifts between peoples to end the eternal struggles that we have between us.

God is all powerful; God is Love; God is Truth; God is omniscient. Life, Truth, and Love are the realities of God; these three both glow and grow in faith and true spiritual Wisdom, true spiritual prayer. In our human state, our relationships and conversations ebb and flow. During the silent spaces between these phases, it is necessary for us to turn towards the Divine and allow the silent times to welcome God into our midst, thus preserving the Love God offers. This is His guiding hand of Truth and Love.

© Russell Kendall Carter

Jesus told His disciples that in three days he would restore the temple; of course, we all know He was speaking of His body.

We are not different! Our bodies, our temples are gifts from and gifts to God.  Our temples store the presence of the Holy Spirit, protecting and guiding us through our mortal life. God’s Wisdom is His temple and is my temple if life. This gift is free and is THE WAY of God, the way of Jesus. Without this gift we cannot find God, we cannot feel the Holy Spirit within. In my waking hours, and I pray in my hours of sleep, I am always present for God’s Wisdom, for the presence is always within me. I know that miscellaneous thoughts and ideas, the trials of my life, come and go, but I also know that God’s Wisdom is always present.

My mortal life is limited, but with God’s Wisdom always within me, any trials I face are not permanent; they do not harm me, they make me stronger, in life, and in faith. A kinder, gentler world is available for me because I know that any assistance needed is always within me supported and protected by the Holy Spirit.

Holy Father, I pray that I will always be faithful to the temple You have built inside me and that I will follow your Truth always.

© Russell Kendall Carter

My eyes always search for the presence of the faithful; they surround me with love and comfort all day and all night long. They are a blessing I enjoy with God’s compassion. The faithful in my presence allow me to dream of the other world that is possible, the world of God, not of man. I know that in this revelation of truth, God lives within us as a nurturing Spirit.

Gracious Father, my soul suffers for Your salvation. I praise You and love You, God, yet I remain fragile; I remain vulnerable; I am completely dependent on Your Grace. My soul is a simple creature, one of Your creations. I am forever climbing Jacob’s ladder to attain a higher salvation from this wicked man-tainted world. I continually search, even though I know where true salvation lies.

I lie awake at night suffering in both physical and mental anguish; I fear for my isolation in this disparate world, awaiting Your curative presence. I turn to the paradox of my very mortal life. I search for the revelation that Jesus brought forth the knowledge that the human and the divine are joined forever; they are not separated by man’s foolishness. My true self dwells with the Divine God of my fathers, of my fellow humans, with my very soul; this is my salvation.

© Russell Kendall Carter

Chatter. . . chatter. . . is all we hear. . . all day long, on the radio, on the tv, from our cellphones. We are under a constant barrage of daily nonsensical chatter that only disturbs us. All we hear or read raises questions, most of which cannot be answered by our closed secluded minds. And this is not to mention (although I am about to) alternative facts. We do realize that there is no such thing as alternative facts; there are facts and non-facts, also called opinions.

With each new dawn comes a new life for us to experience if we open our hearts and minds lifted to the golden care of God. Listening is the core of life, but not listening to our distractions, listening to God, listening for His (or Her) tender, quiet voice.

Listening is the core of life! Listening creates bonds between people, and more importantly, bonds between mankind and God. God sees us as we really are; and if we listen carefully, God challenges us to grow, to improve. We can grow into the person we are meant to be, just by listening to God and for God. We are stewards and caretakers for each other; together we find the gifts of life; we find God’s Wisdom in our communal life and understanding. We become gifts for each other in life, in life with God.

I rejoice in the knowledge that God in my quiet hours of listening brings me both love and meaning to my life, my life with others. The Holy Spirit becomes strong in me, bringing me compassion for every soul in God’s creation.

My prayer for healing today:

Heavenly Father, Compassionate God, I am grateful for the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives. We know we are the present messengers for your Son here on Earth. We thank You for the Wisdom of being able to live without fear. We thank You for giving us the questions in our quiet times so that we are able to answer them with wise and comforting responses to aid everyone we are blessed to meet in life. You share the Wisdom you possess with us, but we also understand that You are greater than all Wisdom.

Gracious God giving us the gift of listening.

© Russell Kendall Carter

We all pray! Even if we do not realize that we pray! I am in constant chronic pain, yet I awaken each morning with a “Thank You, God for another day on Earth.” This is the simplest of prayers. Reading scripture, I often come across the phrase, “Pray constantly,” or something to that extent. This often causes me to think that my life is constant prayer, mainly for others, but selfishly for myself, too.

So, I ask, “What spiritual language do you speak when praying?” Language does not matter; God understands all! We should never approach prayer timidly. Prayer is one of the most (if not the most important) thing we can do in our spiritual lives. Prayer draws the attention of God as He carefully looks at both humanity and the heart of those who pray. We are blessed to have this most important presence in our lives.

I look back on the good that I have done, and unfortunately, I also see the harm that I have caused. My past cannot faded from my memory, but I dwell not on the past, for God is more interested in my future, a future pledged to be one beyond the storms that inhabit our existences, a future that hopefully, with God’s eternal help, which benefits all my brothers and sisters who toil along with me.

Nothing in our world stays the same. Our hopes and our dreams walk side by side, as we do in our struggles. When I am in pain, so is my brother in Christ. What I do when my life is consumed by pain and what I do when my brother’s life is full of pain is recorded and reverberates throughout many lifetimes that follow. Our goodness and our evils affect our own and the following generations.

My life is an endless search for Truth; life is a sum total of all that we do, all that we share, and all that others do and share. When we share our spiritual language with all of the selfless love we can generate, we have an intimacy with God that is eternal and raises our souls (which are attached directly to God) to infinite heights.

What spiritual language do you use when praying? It doesn’t matter; God hears and shares with us the Holy words spoken by those who pray.

 © Russell Kendall Carter

The only way to seek unity with God is through prayer. As we know, prayer is the longing of the heart for God. Many of us use prayer only to ask God for something we are unable to attain ourselves, such as healing. This makes prayer extremely self-serving. Image what the world would be like if we used prayer solely for others.

In my prayers for the health and welfare of all, I experience great Love, great Hope, and a great increase in my belief and trust in God. My life is a roller coaster; one could say unpredictable. But with prayer, God and His Mercy comforts me. In Mark’s gospel, we encounter a very human Jesus; Jesus presents himself as a human affected by societal misbehavior and personal jealousies, greed, and prejudice. Jesus is always on the side of the downtrodden. He brings Grace into our presence.

Seeing the mortal Jesus in this venue increases our belief in honesty and Truth and the power of true Love as only God can give. The Love of Jesus and the Love of God invites us to tackle those hardships coming on the horizon. We are offered the opportunity to end all oppression and exploitation. We don’t look back for the future is ours and what we make it to be. Let us join in prayer, intimately, and bring God’s Word to life. If life is the sum of our choices, let’s opt for Truth.

 © Russell Kendall Carter

We all have a special assignment from God. Some of us never find it due to blindness to Truth. I am nearing my seventy-ninth birthday; I am also meditating about what God wants of me in my later years; I know I am not finished with my mission in life. In my prayers, I listen for God’s words, which leads to true Wisdom, which in turn leads back to God. I write the words given to me for they are not mine; they are God’s. All thoughts originate with God and are transported to us through our meditations and prayers.

I am blessed to have knowledge granted to me by God, but I also realize that I am only given a small sliver of True Wisdom. Unlike God, I cannot deal with all of the Wisdom He holds, but with what He gives me, I try to use it honestly. I wonder and speculate all the time; to me this is both the beginning and the ending of knowledge. With every word I read, I realize that I am closer to Wisdom. But with the time it takes to attain this knowledge I sometimes feel I am in a timeless realm of both simplicity and complexity. This, unfortunately, is our normal state as humans.

When I find myself floating in the vast mystery of life that surrounds me, I turn to my faith in God to be totally absorbed into His presence. This is the only way that I can retain and ascertain the simplicity of life in God’s realm. This gift of simplicity is where I find myself when I look for my special assignment. Even in my older age, I know that God brings the divine to my doorstep. And then I find myself on the path to the mission God has designed for me.

And. . . I am blessed.

© Russell Kendall Carter

In the Gospel of John, Jesus is interrogated by Pontius Pilate who demands to know if Jesus is the King of the Jews. He later had the sign INRI nailed above him on the cross. The reverend William Coffin (Riverside Church) called this powerless love vs. loveless power. I like to meditate on this interesting comment.

Jesus refers to mankind believing in earthly things and not heavenly things. As a man of faith, I strongly believe in heavenly things, but as we all, I must live in a society governed by earthly things. Our government does not care about God’s wishes for mankind. Some individual leaders do, but when governing God’s plans are laid aside. It is almost impossible to live and believe in heavenly things when our society is bombarding us every day with material wants, demands, and just about everything alien to God’s plans for us.

God gives us light, a light to live and a light to love by, and yet, more of us covet the darkness of anger, greed, and jealousy. We recognize the gifts from God; we know that His gifts do not include these three vices. When we are skeptics to the healings of Jesus; we are also skeptical of our gift of love. Before Jesus left His disciples, He asks, “Do you love Me;” and follows with “Feed My sheep.”

There is noting more intimate than prayer, prayer for mankind, and there is nothing more intimate than sharing prayer. Prayer and sharing are partners in our lives, partners worthy of God’s full attention. We can practice powerless love (bringing God back to the table) and feed His sheep or to practice loveless power feeding our ill-fated egos.

©Russell Kendall Carter

The Stronghold of all PeopleI am both old and young. I was born into the flesh in 1943, so, you might say I am old. But I say I am young also, because I believe that my spiritual being is eternal and being eternal, it cannot be aged. My spiritual side is my soul and that belongs to God; it is, therefore, eternal. This belief is snuggled into my zeal in the knowledge that God is my light, as He is for all. God is both judge and refuge for all people for all time before we are born to the flesh and forever after our flesh dies.

Although I am a Christian, I have studied many world religions. There are people around our small planet who are very devout and pray to God daily. There is only one god, but there are just as many names for God that there are religions on Earth. I understand that many people will not agree with me on this. I also believe in Jesus as the mortal manifestation of God on Earth. And I believe that reading in other religions, there are many manifestations of God on Earth. Could these other manifestations also be Jesus in other names according to the different traditions? Only Go knows; we cannot for we lack the Wisdom of God. If we believe in one all-mighty God, then we cannot denounce other religions just because different names are used. God’s doors are open to everyone. Jesus said, in my Father’s house there are many rooms; let us not forget that. The glory of God is manifold; we are all safe and secure in His loving arms. We listen for His voice within us and magnify His daily presence.

Let us join with others recognizing our shared glory in His eternal presence within.

© Russell Kendall Carter