Good Morning Garden

Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God (Matthew 5:8).

This is one of those wonderful gnomic sayings in which the Bible is so rich. It is a summing up in a few words of a whole philosophy of religion.

Let us begin by considering what the promise in this Beatitude is. It is nothing less than to see God. To “see” in the sense referred to here, signifies spiritual perception, and spiritual perception is just that capacity to apprehend the true nature of Being that we all so sadly lack.

We live in God’s world, but we do not in the least know it as it is. Heaven, lies all about us, but because we are lacking in spiritual perception, we are unable to recognize it, to experience it, and, therefore, so far as we are concerned, we may be said to be shut out of Heaven.

We are very much in the position of a color-blind man in a beautiful flower garden. All around him are glorious colors; but he sees only blacks, whites, and grays. If we suppose him to be also devoid of the sense of smell, we shall see what a very small part of the glory of the garden exists for him. Yet it is all there, if he could but sense it.

Our task is to surmount these limitations as rapidly as may be, until we reach the point where we can know things as they really are—experience Heaven as it really is. That is what is meant by “seeing God.” To see God is to apprehend Truth as it really is, and this is infinite freedom and perfect bliss.

Today’s message inspired the Good Morning Garden’s premise; that God gave us an Eden (heaven on earth) in which to live, and that we are the only thing that can keep us from living there. The garden God created for us is not free from the world’s problems; it simply frees us from them. We see this world and are able to live in it when our eyes have been opened by our hearts. That is, when we have accepted God’s truth, believe in God’s truth and submit our will to God’s will. It is then that we become pure in heart.

Seeking a purer heart,
Z gardener

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Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled (Matthew 5:6).

Righteousness is another of the key words of the Bible, one of those keys that the reader must have in his possession if he is to get at the true meaning of the book. Like earth and meek and comfort, it is used in a special and definite sense. Righteousness means not merely right conduct, but right thinking. In the Sermon on the Mount, every clause reiterates the truth that outer things are but consequences. As within, so without.

When people awaken to a knowledge of these truths, they naturally begin to apply them in their own lives. Realizing at last the vital importance of “righteousness” they begin immediately to try to put their house in order. The principle involved is simple, but unfortunately the exemplifying of it is anything but easy. Now, why should this be so? The answer lies in the potency of habit; and habits of thinking are at once the most subtle and the most difficult to break.

Perhaps failure to achieve righteousness is the failure of half-heartedness; you long but not too deeply. Your hunger and thirst do not rise from a sense of total need. Have a mental stocktaking or a review of your life. It could not happen that a wholehearted search for truth and righteousness, if persevered in, should not be crowned with success. God is not mocked, nor does He mock His children.

Although righteousness begins within, it must manifest itself without. In other words, we must long and hunger for righteousness so deeply that we are willing to change not only our minds, but also our habits and actions. Now this is so difficult that we are unable to accomplish it alone. However, with God’s help we can and will overcome our self-centered habits and desires in order to achieve righteousness.

In hunger,
Z gardener

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Moses, who overcame the old age belief to the extent of manifesting the physical body of a young man in the prime of life when, according to the calendar, he was one hundred and twenty years old, and then transcended matter altogether, or “dematerialized” without dying; was known preeminently for this quality; “as meek as Moses.” Apart from his own personal demonstration, Moses also did a marvelous work for his whole nation, getting it out of Egyptian bondage in the face of incredible difficulties. Moses had an open mind, ready to be taught new things and new ways of thinking and working. He was not, in the beginning at least, free from serious faults of character, but he gradually rose above these defects as the new truth worked in his soul.

Moses thoroughly understood that to conform oneself rigorously to the will of God, far from involving the loss of any good, could only mean a better and more splendid life. He did not, therefore, think of his task as self-sacrifice, for he knew it to be the highest form of self-glorification; the glorification of God.

…the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works. I am in the Father, and the Father is in me (John 14:10-11).

There is a marvelous Oriental saying that “meekness compels God himself.”

The bottom line is that we must choose whether to conform ourselves to the will of God or to our own will. We will surrender to God or will surrender to that which plagues us. We will rise above the self-centered human will to claim our freedom and joy, or will sink into the self and lose our inheritance of love, hope and faith.

In surrender,
Z gardener

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Let us see how we are to go about inheriting the earth. This Beatitude says that dominion, that is, power over the conditions of our lives, is to be obtained in a certain way, by nothing less than meekness.

The word meek in the Bible connotes a mental attitude for which there is no other single word available. It is a combination of open-mindedness, faith in God, and the realization that the will of God for us is always something joyous and interesting and vital. This state of mind also includes a perfect willingness to allow this will of God to come about in whatever way divine Wisdom considers to be best, rather than in some particular way that we have chosen for ourselves.

This mental attitude of teachableness, willingness to be led, is the key to dominion, or success in demonstration. There is no word for it in common speech, because the thing does not exist except for those who are up on the spiritual basis of the teaching of Jesus Christ. If we desire to inherit the earth we must absolutely acquire this ‘meekness.’

The Lord reigneth; let the earth rejoice…(Psalm 97:1).

As with so many things Jesus taught us, this teaching appears on its face to contradict that which we experience in our daily lives. How can meekness lead to dominion? And, as with most all of Jesus’ teachings, the surface perception based on our senses is what contradicts the truth.

Seeking meekness,
Z gardener

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Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth (Matthew 5:5).

On the surface, this Beatitude seems to be contradicted by the facts of everyday life. But either Jesus knew what he was talking about, and is to be taken seriously, or his teaching should be dropped altogether. If he is to be relied upon, then let us pay him the compliment of assuming that he knew best about the art of living.

The fact is that when correctly understood, the teaching of Jesus is found to be the most practicable of all doctrines; and the whole essence of his teaching and of its application is summed up in this text. When you possess the spiritual meaning of this text you have the secret of dominion; the secret of overcoming every kind of difficulty.

We notice that there are two polar words in the text; meek and earth. First of all, the word earth in the Bible really means the whole of your outer experience, and to “inherit the earth” means to have dominion over that outer experience. So we see that when the Bible talks about possessing the earth, governing the earth, making the earth glorious, it is referring to the conditions of our lives, from our bodily health outward to the farthest point in our affairs. So this text undertakes to tell us how we may possess, or govern, or be masters of our environment.

To master the outer world, we must first master the inner world. The journey to Eden begins within. The first step is to assume that Jesus’ and God’s words are correct and true. Be sure of this , they are all correct or it is all nonsense. To accept this truth is the first step to meekness and to living into our true inheritance. When we accept this reality, our meekness has taken root and we have begun to shed our human spirits and carnal selves so as to take up our spiritual selves. So, the first step toward meekness is rising above the self to manifest God’s will for our nature.

In submission,
Z gardener

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Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted (Matthew 5:4).

Mourning or sorrow is not in itself a good thing, for the will of God is that everyone should experience happiness and joyous success. Jesus says:
…
I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly (John 10:10).

Nevertheless, trouble and suffering are often extremely useful, because many people will not bother to learn the Truth until driven to do so by sorrow and failure. Sorrow then becomes relatively a good thing. Sooner or later every human being will have to discover the truth about God, and make his own contact with Him at first hand. He will have to acquire the understanding of Truth, which will set him free, once and for all, from our three-dimensional limitations and their concomitant sin, sickness, and death. There is really no need for man to have trouble, because if he will only seek God first, the trouble need never come. He always has the choice of learning by spiritual unfoldment or of learning by painful experience. Family troubles, quarrels and estrangements, sin and remorse, need never come at all if we seek first the Kingdom of God and Right Understanding; but if we will not do so, then come they must, and for us this mourning will be a blessing in disguise, for through it we shall be comforted.” And by comfort the Bible means the experience of the Presence of God, which is the end of all mourning.

If we would seek God first, every other effort would be easier, happier and less troublesome. Try this; the next time a concern raises itself, first think of how God instructs us to respond or be proactive. Then do what God directs and see how it goes. Whatever the issue, you will find its best resolution in this formula. The results will amaze.

Mourning and celebrating with God,
Z gardener

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One of the saddest passages in all literature is the story of the Rich Young Man who missed one of the great opportunities of history, and

…went away sorrowful: for he had great possessions (Matthew 19:22).

This is really the story of mankind in general. We reject the salvation that Jesus offers us “our chance of finding God” because we ” have great possessions,”; not so much that we are very rich in terms of money, for indeed most people are not, but because we have great possessions in the way of preconceived ideas; confidence in our own judgment, and in the ideas with which we happen to be familiar. We have pride, born of academic distinction; sentimental or material attachment to institutions and organizations; habits of life that we have no desire to renounce; concern for human respect; or perhaps fear of public ridicule. And these possessions keep us chained to the rock of suffering that is our exile from God.

The poor in spirit suffer from none of these embarrassments, either because they never had them, or because they have risen above them on the tide of spiritual understanding.

What “possessions” are keeping us from “finding God”? What attitudes, desires, actions or positions are locking us out of God’s garden? Are they worth the loss of true communion with God? Would we trade peace on this plane and eternal salvation in the next plane to protect and pursue the “possessions” in which we place so much value?

Shedding possessions,
Z gardener

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Blessed are the poor in spirit; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 5:3).

To be poor in spirit does not in the least mean the thing we call “poor spirited.” To be poor in spirit means to have emptied yourself of all desire to exercise personal self-will, and, what is just as important, to have renounced all preconceived opinions in the whole-hearted search for God. It means to be willing to set aside your present habits of thought, your present views and prejudices, your present way of life if necessary; to jettison, in fact anything and everything that can stand in the way of your finding God.

How much of our lives are we willing to jettison when we discover that these aspects of our lives are blocking our search for God? Many times it is clear that something we hold dear is causing us to stray form God’s will for us. The harder part comes when we realize we must eliminate this aspect of our life that we don’t want to abandon. Some of these things are opinions, notions and preconceptions. Some of the obstacles are things we may enjoy, may feel justified in and yes, even feel are essential to our happiness. Yet, when it becomes clear that these habits, notions or convictions are against God’s will and way, we must be willing to let them go.

Choosing God’s spirit,
Z gardener

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The sermon on the Mount opens with the eight Beatitudes. They are actually a prose poem in eight verses and constitute a general summary of the Christian teaching. A general summing up, such as this, is highly characteristic of the old Oriental mode of approach to a religious and philosophical teaching, and it naturally recalls the Eightfold Path of Buddhism, the Ten Commandments of Moses,and other such compact groupings of ideas.

Jesus concerned himself exclusively with the teaching of general principles, and these general principles always had to do with mental states, for he knew that if one’s mental states are right, everything else might be right too. Unlike the other great religious teachers, he gives us no detailed instructions about what we are to do or not to do.

… the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father.
…the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth; for the Father seeketh such to worship him.

God is a spirit; and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and truth
(John 4:21, 23-24).

As we look into our own spirits, let us contemplate Jesus’ teaching on the spirit with faith, hope and anticipation. Let us with an open heart and mind, reflect upon those spiritual attributes that will create the metal state God intends for us. This will require the willingness to face the truth and to change our spirits where they they have gone astray.

From the garden,
Z gardener

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The setting forth of the Sermon on the Mount is an almost perfect codification of the religion of Jesus Christ. It covers the essentials. It is practical and personal. It is definite, specific, and yet widely illuminating. Once the true meaning of the instructions has been grasped, it is only necessary to begin putting them into practice to get immediate results. The magnitude and extent of these results will depend solely upon the sincerity and thoroughness with which they are applied. That is a matter which each individual has to settle for himself.

If you really do wish to become a different person altogether in the sight of God and man, then Jesus, in his Sermon on the Mount, has clearly shown you how it is to be done.

If you are prepared to break with the old man, and start upon the creation of the new one, then the study of the great Sermon will indeed be to you the Mountain of Liberation.

But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves
(James 1:22).

The Easter miracle is celebrated for four weeks in our denomination. It is fitting during this time to reflect upon the true meaning of Jesus’ resurrection in our personal lives. This series of messages exploring the Sermon on the Mount is the perfect vehicle for our reflection.

Burying the old to raise the new,
Z gardener

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