Category Archives: Stages in our Spiritual Journeys
Questions for Believers
What is the difference between saved and loved? Does being saved mean being finished? Is the Bible the Word of God or is Jesus the Word of God fleshed out for us?
Was Jesus making choices to love more and more people other than his own religion and nationality, even the Roman enemy, a major part of Being the Word of God? Is the WAY of Jesus’ life and willingness to love even those that killed him supposed to be the WAY of Christian’s lives? Did Jesus love unconditionally? Does God love unconditionally? Do we?
What is the difference between need and love?
Could our life journey from the neediness of a baby be a process of becoming able to love unconditionally? Does loving our neighbor mean only loving others whom we know and who are like us? Does loving Jesus mean we get to be rich? What did Jesus say about the rich man? Are our heroes rich? Are they kind? Are they like Jesus?
If, as he was dying, Hitler recognized the horrors he had caused and was stricken with sorrow and regret, would God forgive him?
Is our Spiritual journey more than following a set of ten rules basic to the survival of humans living together? In fact, are the Beatitudes the challenges that Jesus gave us for our adult Spiritual journey to loving BOTH ourselves AND others unconditionally, because Jesus fleshed out the unconditional love of God for all?
Do you love all your children even when they fail, hurt you, and abandon you?
Does God?
Have you ever failed God?
Old Age Has Its Wisdom, but Younger Generations Start Off with a Lot of What We’ve Learned: We Can All Learn from Each Other
Idealists are in danger of never being satisfied, which in one way is a good thing since we fight to make the world a better place for all, but it plays havoc with marriages. If you are an idealist without an awareness of the down side, listen up! ONLY with a relationship with a power wiser than you (GOD/ALLAH/BUDDHA/ YOUR GREAT-GRANDMOTHER) will you recognize when you are thinking about ‘trading up” that it may mean you will just have to start over (and possibly over and over, etc.) to recognize that you are unrealistic about life and relationships. Believe me, watch for signals of this, in case that higher power is trying to give you a much shorter way to “growing both wiser and more able to love.” The search for the perfect person is futile. There is no such thing, including yourself. Life is a journey with both challenges and grace (if we are open to it) to become the more loving person we were created to be. (This doesn’t mean you put up with abuse.) God is alive and well and still doing the Jesus thing if we are aware of it. That can make a huge difference in the journey to becoming the best (imperfect) person we were created to be.
NEW INSIGHT
Recently my eyes were opened to the reality that someone who is tuned into the journey of grace going on in both their own life and in their generation can know in their forties what it’s taken us in our eighties a lot longer to learn! I may know some things from those years of learning that they don’t, but they are way ahead of where I was at their age. Yes, we may have gained some wisdom on our life’s journey that even a spiritual and wise forty-year-old may not have yet. But they started from a different place than us old guys did. If they were open to wisdom that our generation and some after us has learned, they are wiser at forty than we were and may not be far behind us where we are even now. Listen to them and put what you’ve learned together with what they know. Both ages have a lot to give to each other.
Stages in our Spiritual Journey
Praising God for the Hard Things and then Learning to Let Go and Trust God.
Many decades ago I read a book called, “From Prison to Praise.” It was written by a man who not only found Jesus in prison, bu also found grace in praising God in absolutely everything.
First, a disclaimer: Though I have done this is both small and large challenges over my life, in stages of my life that aren’t particularly difficult, I tend to forget to praise. But in the years of hard challenges, it has had some amazing impacts on my struggles, even though it is not a magic incantation. Just like I have experienced miracles of healing, I have also had health issues that weren’t healed, and my mother died by inches over fourteen years of Alzheimer’s, and my husband struggled for years with both heart and lung issues, and died from a second round of cancer. Healing is not the norm. If it was, the earth would have standing-room only. To me healings are so we know when we don’t experience miracles that there’s a purpose and the grace to grow from our struggles whatever they are.
But, that said, two ways of handling life challenges have definitely brought relief at times.
The first is praising God in whatever our affliction is.
My first experience was with an ineffective toilet installed with pipes in a concrete slab running up hill to a septic tank. Guess what doesn’t run uphill! After many failed attempts to reach the plumber responsible for this, I began seethe with anger and frustration, but finally having read the book about Praising, in desperation I began to “plunge and praise.” Well, it didn’t “cure” the plumbing problem, but it began to focus me on God and the love I had experienced. It lifted my spirits and changed my whole attitude. So, when I finally spotted the “evil” plumber in Kroger’s, I stopped him before he could run, thanking him profusely for the pitiful plumbing job, explaining that because of it God was getting much praise and I was receiving grace. He looked at me like I had lost my mind and fled.
Some years after that I began to experience severe pain in my hands and wrists. In retrospect, I think it was fibromyalgia triggered by stress. But once again, I would praise God when having to do housework in pain. This time whenever I managed to do this, the pain would let up when I would focus on the love of God. And the pain finally stopped happening.
More years passed and then in the wee hour of the morning shortly before Christmas, I woke up with a horrible throbbing pain in my eye. It was excruciating. There were no ophthalmologists in our small town then. Knowing we would need to drive forty miles and with my husband recovering from the flu, I decided to lie on the couch in the living room where the Christmas tree was and try to tough it out until it was time to get ready to go. I began to praise God with my teeth gritted, not at all sincere about it. After a few moments, I sensed a presence by a table near the window. I cannot describe it, but the sense of incredible love coming from it made me sure it was Jesus. I began to praise and thank with both will and sheer joy, even though the pain continued. Finally, after a while, I fell asleep. And when the sun coming in the window woke me up, my eye was healed and I never had any trouble with it again.
I’m in my eighties now and often now when facing difficulty without getting answers to prayer, I focus on accepting the difficulty. It usually involves letting go of my vision of how I want things to be. I think in our later years, letting go is what brings peace.
Praising and accepting seem almost two parts of the same process. And the small or large “miracles” show us we are heard, but also help us learn and grow through grace in the hard times.
Laughter: Carbonated Grace 