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Archive for November, 2012

Comfort for Mourning

Posted in Good Morning, tagged , on November 30, 2012| Leave a Comment »

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 concomitants—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.
It is through understanding this truth, that we comprehend the Bible’s admonition to be thankful for “all things”. If we fail to accept God’s truth voluntarily and from the beginning, then it will come to us through trouble, sin and sorrow. These are not sent to hurt or punish us, but occur to warn us and turn us away from harm or danger ahead.
And as always, God is there to comfort us and suffer with us until we see the truth and yield to his will. Then we can find the gardens God created for us.
Being thankful,
Z gardener

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Great Possessions

Posted in Good Morning, tagged , on November 29, 2012| Leave a Comment »

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.
Rich in God,
Z gardener

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The Poor In Spirit

Posted in Good Morning, tagged , on November 27, 2012| Leave a Comment »

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.
Are we willing to empty ourselves of all desire to exercise personal self-will; renounce all preconceived opinions; set aside our present habits of thought, present views and prejudices; even our present way of life? This is what is meant by emptying our selves so we can be filled with God’s will and grace.
When we are willing to do all these things, we will be “poor in spirit” and living in the Kingdom God created for us in our gardens.
Running on empty,
Z gardener

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The Sermon on ther Mount – The Beatitudes

Posted in Good Morning, tagged , on November 26, 2012| Leave a Comment »

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).
Are we living our lives in spirit and truth? Are we worshipping God this way. In spirit means that which is in our hearts, our intentions and our minds. In truth means according to God’s teachings. Many of us worship and live in physicality and sensory perception. This will not lead us to the Eden God created for us.
When our perception and reality is based on spirituality and God’s truth, we are on the path to our gardens.
In spirit and truth,
Z gardener

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Thankful for you

Posted in Good Morning, tagged on November 22, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Many thanks to the Good Morning Gardeners who share this Eden God created for us. Each of you have blessed this writer in receiving the thoughts generated each day. May all of God ‘s blessings be manifested in your hearts, minds, spirits and will.
Thank you,
Z gardener

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Truth Demonstrated

Posted in Good Morning, tagged , on November 21, 2012| Leave a Comment »

 

 

 

         Truth never changes, but what we have to deal with on this plane is man’s apprehension of the Truth, and throughout historical time, this has been steadily and continuously becoming more plain to us.

 

 

Jesus Christ summed up this Truth, taught it completely and thoroughly, and, above all, demonstrated it in his own person. Most of us now can glimpse intellectually the idea of what it must mean in its fullness. To accept the Truth is the great first step, but not until we have proved it in doing is it ours. Jesus proved everything that he taught, even to the overcoming of death in what we call the resurrection. By surmounting every sort of limitation to which mankind is subject, he performed a work of unique and incalculable value to the race, and is therefore justly entitled the Savior of the world.

 

 

…when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth…(John 16:13).

 

 

“To accept the truth is the first great step”. Unless we take that first correct step, we will not arrive at the desired destination. Remember, the journey of a thousand mile starts with the first step. When we accept the spirit of truth, we will receive the guidance we need to find our Eden.

 

 

Truthsayer,

Z gardener

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The Purpose of the Bible

Posted in Good Morning, tagged , on November 9, 2012| 1 Comment »

          Externally, the Bible is a collection of inspired documents written by men of all kinds, in all sorts of circumstances, and over hundreds of years of time. The documents are seldom originals, but redactions and compilations of older fragments; and the names of the actual writers are seldom known for certain. This, however, does not affect the spiritual purpose of the Bible. The book, as we have it, is inexhaustible reservoir of spiritual Truth, compiled under divine inspiration, and the actual route by which it reached its present form does not matter.

History, biography, lyrical and other poetic forms are various mediums through which the spiritual message is given in the Bible; and, above all, the parable is used to convey spiritual and metaphysical truth. In some cases what was never intended to be more than a parable was, at one time, taken for literal statement of fact; and this often made the Bible seem to teach things that are opposed to common sense.

The spiritual key to the Bible rescues us from these difficulties, dilemmas, and seeming inconsistencies. And the Truth turns out to be nothing less than the amazing but undeniable fact that the whole outer world—whether it be the physical body, the common things of life, the winds and the rain, the clouds, the earth itself—is amenable to man’s thought, and that he has dominion over it when he knows it.

Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet (Psalm 8:6).

The purpose of the Bible is for humans to have the creator’s operating manual for living spiritually in a material world. The person who studies it with eyes to see and ears to hear will receive all they need for peace, hope and love if they follow what they have learned.

With eyes wide open,

Z gardener

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A Basic Miracle

Posted in Good Morning, tagged , on November 8, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Let us suppose, for the sake of example, that on a certain Monday, your affairs are in such a condition that, humanly speaking, certain consequences are sure to follow before the end of the week. These may be legal consequences, perhaps of a very unpleasant nature following upon some decision of the courts; or a physician may decide that a perilous operation will be necessary. Now, if someone can raise the consciousness of the harassed individual above the limitations of the physical plane then the conditions on that plane will change, and, in some unforeseen and normally impossible manner, the legal tragedy will melt away, and to the advantage, be it noted, of all parties to the case; or the patient will be healed instead of having to undergo the operation.
In other words, miracles, in the popular sense of the word, can and do happen as the result of a change of consciousness, and a change of consciousness is usually accomplished through prayer. Thus prayer does change things.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts (Isaiah 55:9).
Raising our consciousness through prayer does in fact change things. And when the outer problem is not changed, the inner reality changes to convert the problem into a blessing. Either way, we are blessed and at peace.
In conscioussness raising prayer,
Z gardener

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Miracles

Posted in Good Morning, tagged , on November 6, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Jesus taught through miracles.
If the miracles did not happen, the rest of the Gospel story loses all real significance. If Jesus did not believe them to be possible, and  undertake to perform them, then the Gospel message is chaotic, contradictory, and devoid of significance.
But the deeds related to Jesus in the Four Gospels did happen, and many others too, “the which, if they should be written, every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written.” Jesus himself justified what people thought to be a strange teaching by the works he was able to do; and he went further and said,
…the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works… (John 14:12).
Now what, after all, is a miracle? Those who deny the possibility of miracles on the ground that the universe is a perfect system of law and order, to the operation of which there can be no exceptions, are perfectly right. But the explanation is that the world of which we are normally aware, and with whose law alone most people are acquainted, is only a fragment of the whole universe as it really is; and that there is such a thing as appealing from a lower to a higher law—from a lesser to a greater expression. In the sense of a real breach of law, miracles are impossible. Yet, in the sense that all ordinary rules and limitations of the physical plane can be set aside or overridden by an understanding that has risen above them, miracles can and do happen.
When we accept God’s truth, our eyes are opened to a greater law, greater perception and greater understanding of the universe than we are capable of alone. The act of belief pulls back the curtain of human perception and sensory limitation to reveal the true nature and reality of the universe in which we otherwise blindly navigate (“as through a veil, darkly”).
This new perception and understanding gives the believer access to the higher law that is not subject to human perception, senses and knowledge. When we operate under higher law, miracles do in fact happen that may appear to up end natural law as the unbeliever understands it (because their earthly “wisdom has made them foolish”.
Even better, Jesus himself said we are all capable of such miracles, and even greater ones. So, if we are to create miracles and benefit from them. we must open our hearts, minds and spirits to the higher law revealed by God. Then let our “foolishness (faith) make us wise”.
Living the miracle,
Z gardener

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Letter or Spirit?

Posted in Good Morning, tagged , on November 5, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Jesus made a special point of discouraging the laying of emphasis upon outer observances; and, indeed, upon hard-and-fast rules and regulations of every kind. What he insisted upon was a certain spirit in one’s conduct, knowing that when the spirit is right, details will take care of themselves. Yet, in spite of this, the history of orthodox Christianity is largely made up of attempts to enforce all sorts of external observances upon the people.
Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life (2 Corinthians 3:6).
Jesus’ entire ministrry was based on this principle. Mere adherence to form without spiritual integrity is hollow. Take any example. The Good Samiritan violated all the religious rules to help the injured traveler, yet he was cited by Jesus as the only one who acted as the person’s neighbor.
That which is within in our hearts, our spirits and our minds is what makes an act right or wrong most of the time. Even the criminal code supports this same priciple. The person who kills another person is self defense is not guilty of murder and is innocent of that charge.
So today, let us evaluate our owm motives and whether our actions meet the spirirt of the Bible, instead of just following the forms. Let us critically review if our “Christian” behavior is based on love, acceptance and tolerance.
In the spirit of the law,
Z gardener

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