Daily Reflections, Day Seventy One, Living faithfully does not guarantee success.

Day Seventy One

Living faithfully does not guarantee success.

“That the miracle may have effects on your brothers that you may not recognize is not your concern. The miracle will always bless you. Miracles you are not asked to perform have not lost their value. They are still expressions of your own state of grace, but the action aspect of the miracle should be controlled by me because I am aware of the whole plan. The impersonal nature of miracle-mindedness ensures your grace, but only I am in a position to know where they can be bestowed.” ACIM. T-1.111.8:1-5

We never know where our intentions of Love may land or the effects they may have. Mother Teresa said one time that she and her sisters of Charity were called to be faithful not successful. She would leave success in God’s hands.

It is hard to give up attachment to results. We want to feel that we are in control, that we have power and influence, that your actions and work count for something. The joke is, “If you want to hear God laugh, tell God your plans.”

Unconditional Love, the Grace that is referred to above, is a free gift, no strings attached. Jesus is telling us in this passage that our only job is to Love and we need to leave the rest to HIm. He knows the plan He tells us, we don’t.

To love without attachment to results seems almost super human; it certainly is not the way of the ego. To love without attachment is the way of the spirit which is called amazing grace.

Today, love unconditionally with no strings attached. You are no longer giving something to get something. You are simply giving and turning the results over to your Higher Power. You are intent on living your life faithfully and not necessarily what the world would see as successfully. Living your life faithfully will always bring a grace of its own, a grace we often don’t see,  no matter what.

Virtue Development, Faith, part five, The paradox of finding faith in losing our faith,

After a period of relief when we have found what we have been looking for, there comes a period of disturbance. St. John of the Cross called it the dark night of the soul. We become depressed and despair that we have lost our faith.

What happened in the previous stage of relief in thinking we had found what we were looking for was merely recognizing what we did not want. We came to the dawning that there must be a better way and we began our search and thought that we had found what we were looking for but what we found was merely the absence of what we decided we didn’t want. In this emptiness, in this vacuum, a deep depression sets in and we learn again that our lives are unmanageable and that we really, deep down, don’t know what we want. We lose our faith.

The paradox is that in losing our faith we find it by letting go of our search, our desiring, our hope for security in latching on to something we can control and be assured will be there to meet our ego needs. It is in turning over this desire for security to a power greater than ourselves, that we come to know true faith. True faith is faith in the unseen and the unknown and that which is beyond ourself in the Oneness.