Lent 2016 – Day Three – God

“God is good and everywhere present.” ~ Lent 2016, Unity

The Rev. Dr. Thomas W. Shepherd writes about the importance of seeing things from a higher ground and also the lower ground.  He writes, “Higher ground is everywhere—when women and men take a stand for faith and justice and open their arms to people from all branches of the human family tree.”

When I was a little girl, the most impressive place in the church, to me was the alter.  The brass cross, candelabra’s, huge white Bible, and sometimes flowers.  Growing up in the Episcopal Church, rituals and pageantry was a staple.  For a time, I helped my mother and other women clean the communion plates, polish the brass and pews.  We worked in a side room off the chancel.  I remember thinking the Alter looked so bare when we did our polishing.  I thought God wasn’t in the church unless the Alter was set up perfectly.

Trinity Episcopal Church, Baton Rouge, LA

 

 

 

Of course I grew out of those feelings and even began to take the Alter for granted.  Then one day many years later, I realized that the Alter with all its beauty was just a symbol.  It is that place of consciousness where we are willing to let go of the lesser for the greater, to let go of personality and enter into individuality.  Today, I know God is not just on the Alter, but is everywhere present.  In the words of Charles Fillmore, “God as principle is the unchangeable life, love, substance, and intelligence of Being.”

Rev. Shepherd goes on to say, “Lower ground is the root system, telling me who I am and where I’ve come from and how to celebrate the joys and challenges that have brought me here, today.” Every day I make choices and every day I look for my greater good.  I do this by letting go and letting God live through me.  For me, God is very real.  God is Love, Wisdom, Intelligence, Power, Substance, Mind, and the Truth and I find God when inside me as Tennyson said, “Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.”  I go to the Alter and find myself with God and I am grateful.

“There is only One Presence and One Power in the Universe and in my life, God the Good.”

 ~ Rev Pat Veenema, Unity

 

 

Magic Hour at Chickamauga Lake 001 by Janice Kennedy