Gratitude – 5/8/2016

God is Love.  Therefore, He created his image and likeness, man, to be a loving expression of Himself.  Man always expresses love – he knows love, wants love, is attracted to love, and loves love; spiritual, perfect love is his very being and what he was made to know, represent, and express.  Nothing can inhibit that expressing, nothing can pervert it, nothing can hide it, and nothing can oppose it.  God is infinite, all-power, therefore He is always manifested, and his beloved sons and daughters reflect His love – continuously, joyfully, knowingly, effectively, and fully.  Everything God created expresses His love, therefore everything is harmonious, peaceful, beautiful, and comforting.  His loving presence surrounds us all and embraces us in this love.  There can only be love present, because only God is present.  Anything else is an illusion, lie, and false dream.  I know that His love is all and that I can see and experience His all-embracing love.  And I know that love has infinite power to extinguish any suggestion opposed to it, correct any picture misrepresenting it, and fill every place where we don’t immediately see it.  Divine Love is all – all-presence and all-powerful, and there is nothing besides God, Love.

Gratitude – 5/7/2016

In keeping with my new “approach” to this blog (see 5/6/16 post), I’m expressing gratitude tonight that order, cleanliness, and organization are expressions of God and benefit all in His kingdom.  Nothing can oppose the structure of God’s kingdom or the desire and hard work to express it and see it manifested everywhere – including here in this human life.   Evil has no ability to oppose or criticize this expression of God’s orderly and beautiful kingdom.  And nothing can stand in the way of its unfolding and its manifestation.  Our desire to see His “beauty, grandeur, order” (as hymn 329 says) is blessed by Him and our work to manifest it is supported by Him.  We are blessed in this work, our experience and day-to-day life is blessed by the work, and everyone in our experience who is touched by the work is equally blessed.  And nothing can oppose this Truth about God and His kingdom.

Gratitude – 5/6/2016

It’s been a while.  My last post was on February 29 – Leap Day 2016.  I said I was going to get away from posting grateful thoughts about “just” events that took place during the day, and try to focus on spiritual progress – “revelations” – and the like, that I’ve gained or otherwise embraced during each day.

Well, I must confess that that hasn’t “unfolded” as they say.

Not that I haven’t had some great insights these past 2+ months.  I have.  But they just didn’t make it from my heart and thought down through my fingers and into this blog.  I guess the main reason is because this “big insights” didn’t seem to come that often.

So I’m changing my approach to these blog posts.  Partly because the prior two approaches just didn’t seem to work, and partly because there have been lots of ups and downs in my life recently (at the moment it seems like mostly “downs”).  It’s just plain hard to find human events to be grateful for (approach #1) when life seems rough, and expressing gratitude for a few good moments without addressing the rest is too Pollyanna-ish.  And looking for big ideas/insights/revelations when things are rough just doesn’t seem to happen often enough (approach #2).

Approach #3 will be an attempt to attack the “downs” (as well as the “ups”, I suppose) with posting to this blog spiritual facts that I feel MUST lurk behind the messy (or even humanly pleasant) material picture.  I won’t be describing the human events – just affirming the eternal truths that I think must actually exist in their stead.

For example, tonight I think I need to affirm that God’s man only expresses love, respect, and consideration towards all – consistently.  If God is full of love – and, indeed, is Love itself – the man He created can only know and express love, compassion, tenderness, kindness, and respect to all the rest of God’s children.  There is nothing to oppose that, no human ego, memory, influence, or pride.  Since God is good and loving, all of His children can only express goodness and love.  There is never an opportunity or desire to do anything else.  God’s man (and woman) can only express love, and, in reality, only does express love – always, everywhere, to everyone.

Gratitude – 2/29/2016

My gratitude tonight is for another good day at work. I was able to solve a problem that ate up a lot of my time last week, and to make some good progress documenting a possible solution for a very complex procedure redesign for something else.

But, today is February 29 – leap day. So starting tomorrow I’m taking a leap in this blog. I’m going to make an extra effort to find a metaphysical/spiritual reason for my daily gratitude, and not just express gratitude for events during the day (see “Our reason for gratitude” in the December 1953 Christian Science Journal). We’ll see how that goes.

Gratitude -2/28/2016

I’m grateful tonight for the glorious weather we had today. Although it’s a little early for spring fever, today’s beautiful blue sky and 60-degree temperature was just perfect, and certainly a taste of spring even before February is over.

Gratitude – 2/27/2016

I’m grateful for having a very relaxing Saturday. Ruth and I slept in this morning, started the day with pancakes, I took a couple of hours today and finished a couple of small projects for work (which was quite satisfying), we had some great pizza for dinner, and ran to Shop Rite for some quick shopping while Jen put a very tired Annabelle to bed. All-in-all a very nice relaxing day.

Gratitude – 2/25/2016

Today I’m feeling very grateful for a successful project planning (“Sprint”) meeting that I hosted this afternoon. While I’m still wrestling with how to implement the methodology most effectively, I must way I’m very grateful for the participation and support of the user community.

Gratitude – 2/24/2016

I’m grateful tonight at how well our “Sprint Demo” meeting went this afternoon. There were several other things today too, but this morning I was a bit keyed up over this meeting and am very happy it went well.

Gratitude – 2/23/2016

I’m grateful tonight for a few things working out – or at least on the road to resolution – at work. The process to get a new visa for one of my programmers is turning out to be less onerous than I originally thought. Plus, I’m getting good support from several people. Next, some work done by another group that greatly impacts several of my programmers was apparently done incorrectly, but is now well on the way to being fixed. Finally, a problem with a nightly job that I set up a while ago turned out to be a very easy fix.

I’m very grateful for all these issues being resolved, nearly resolved, or being resolved more easily than I expected.

Gratitude – 2/22/2016

I’m still expressing gratitude tonight for having sold our Ford Focus. The man who bought it picked it up this morning and it’s officially gone!  So grateful for how quickly it worked out.