It's often said the best things in life are free. Nowhere does this hold more true than in your relationship with God.
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| St. Lawrence was a 3rd century church deacon who was martyred in Rome in 258 CE. Tradition reports that when he was asked to turn over the wealth of the church to Roman authorities, he instead gave it to the poor and the marginalized, those who are the church's true treasures. This stained glass window was produced in 1889 by Charles Eamer Kempe, and is now on display at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, England (gifted by Mr. Walter E. Tower). Photo credit JAT 2023. |
The wonderful thing about having a relationship with God is that it's a gift -- a freely given gift between you and God -- that doesn't cost you any money and doesn't have to be carried out at a special time or a special place. It can happen anywhere. And it's an ongoing gift, not a one-time thing. Once you open your heart to a relationship with God, the blessings just keep coming.
Think of the things in your life that bring great joy. Start with your own conception. Maybe your parents had to spend some money to prepare a family home or to heal some medical issues that could complicate a pregnancy. But the moment of conception itself -- that was a gift from God, and it was free!
Think about your upbringing. Think about the experience of learning how to be a human being in a whole new world. When you picked up a something hard and heavy, like a rock, and you dropped it on your foot, you were learning about the laws of physics. And the courage to learn was free!
When you tasted what words meant, and you explored how the spices and flavours of words can shape your relationships, you were partaking of the mystery of language, a mystery that ties everything together in Creation. And it was free!
When you listened to songs and hymns and carols, and you sang them till your eyes brimmed with tears of devotion, that was free!
When you watched the buds on a plant unfurl in beauty, or paused at the majesty of a storm-filled sky, or smelled the gratitude of the soil after a long sought rain, you felt your humble connection to Creation, and the sacredness was free!
When your beloved one was close to death, and longed for release from pain and suffering, and you saw the time of passing was near, your grief couldn't take from you the trust that your loved one was close to God. As your heart broke, you felt the love -- the love which is free!
As you think about the most memorable, most transformative moments of your life (especially the feeling of God's presence, if you've had such an experience) you begin to realize that those feelings of connection, love, meaning -- they're all free. They all come from within your heart and soul. They're yours. You didn't "buy" them, because you didn't have to. You were born with them and you own them. Permanently. Nobody can take them from you unless you let them.
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| When you're going through a difficult time, it can help to think of your life as a one-of-a-kind story. The best stories are about rich characters, complex relationships, difficult decisions, and transformative change. Everything that's in your book belongs to you, and you'll take all of it home to Heaven when you die. There you'll have many opportunities to discuss with angelic friends and mentors what you learned during your life as a human being. You, in turn, will learn from the stories of your equally blessed friends. Every story adds to tapestry of Divine Love. This early 14th century Book of Hours, once used for private devotions, is part of the Kenneth Thomson collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Photo credit JAT 2018. |
This brings me to the question of religion. All major world religions do some good things (such as teaching people about human morality) and all major world religions do some bad things (such as teaching people they won't be saved and won't be allowed into Heaven unless they follow all the right doctrines, all the right practices, all the right Saviours).
Questions about the afterlife continue to haunt countless human beings in every generation. Many people turn to religious leaders to try to uncover what will happen to them when they die. Too often religious leaders use this deep seated human need as a way to acquire power for themselves, to manipulate their flocks, to demean and subjugate others with promises about future punishments from God or Source. But they say these frightening things about the End Times for themselves, not for you. They say they're worried about your soul, but what they really mean is they're worried about their own authority. They want you to be scared about what happens when you die because fearful people are much easier to control than courageous people.
These same religious leaders use the trump card of justice to explain why their doctrines of afterlife are not only true but necessary. They say that future punishment for earthly crimes is the only way to balance the universal scales of right and wrong and help good conquer evil. But they're assuming when they say it that God is too stupid and too weak to intervene in our daily lives in ways that Mother Father God -- not human leaders -- deem appropriate. It's the very idea that God constantly intervenes whether we like it or not that undermines everything religion has to say about Materialist laws of cause and effect. Just ask Dr. Eben Alexander. He didn't ask to be put in a coma and sent along on a soul journey to the very gates of Heaven. He didn't ask to become a human messenger about the inclusiveness and expansiveness of Divine Love. But it happened anyway.
Dr. Alexander's near-death experience was an unusual, but nonetheless valid, free gift from God to help him better understand the pathways open to him for building a relationship with God and Creation while he's still here on Planet Earth. Despite the struggles he went through after he awakened from his coma, I have no doubt he'd do it again in a heartbeat. He can now be of service in ways he never could have imagined before his awakening. Such service is in itself a profound gift.
As you reflect on the free gifts you've participated in during your own human life, let me ask you this: if God surrounds you with innumerable free gifts while you're here on Planet Earth, why would God suddenly take away all those free gifts just because you've transitioned to a non-Materialist state of being? Why would God suddenly punish you for mistakes you can no longer fix in the absence of a 3D biological body? Why would God give you love and forgiveness while you're a human being (as Jesus taught) but suddenly rescind these gifts and replace them with laws and contracts and covenants as soon as you die? Does that make any sense to you?
God the Mother and God the Father aren't fickle. And they don't play favourites. So whatever you've been told by religious or spiritual leaders about future punishment or karmic rebirth is a load of treacherous clickbait.
Heaven is the place where all of God's children are welcomed after our difficult lives on Planet Earth. No one is excluded. We were angels -- persons-of-soul -- before we were born here. When we die, we resume our lives as children of God, though we understand as never before how secure we are in the infinite wisdom of God's love.
We are, as Jesus once tried to tell us, forever blessed.
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