God Is Not Stressed.

Faith, God, Trust 0

Care is the operative word — infinite, tender care. This is what we doubt and also what we dream of. It is God’s nature to care for us, and it is perhaps human nature to doubt that care. We know all too well the human failings that come to bear when we promise care. We may, as parents, be too tired or too stressed to give our best care. We tend to project these same attributes onto God. We tend to worry that God is tired and God is stressed and that somehow looking out for us is something that has somehow slipped between the cracks.

But God is not tired. God is not stressed. God is the infinite caregiver. Our well-being is God’s priority. We are urged to trust this, to become “as little children.” We are asked to be wholehearted, to go back to a time before we were cynical and doubtful. God wants us to have faith. “Suffer the little children to come unto me.” We are the little children. How do we become the children that we are?

— Julia Cameron, Faith and Will, p. 97

Believing in God – Or Not

Faith, God, Universalism 0

“Do you think it very bad of a man not to believe in God?”

“That depends on the sort of God he imagines that he either does or does not believe in. Most people have totally wrong conceptions of God. A thousand times would I rather see a man not believe in God at all than believe in an evil god that could cause suffering and misery as if he were a devil. But if a man had the same notion of God that I have — a God who is even now doing his best to take all men and women and beasts out of the misery in which they find themselves — and did not at least desire that there might be such a God, then I confess I would have difficulty in understanding how he could be good. When one looks at the gods that have been offered through the years who are not worth believing in, it might be an act of virtue not to believe in them.”…

“I believe that, no matter how uninteresting he may say the question of a God is to him, the God of patience is taking care of him, and the time must come when something will make him want to know whether there be a God and whether he can get near to him. I should say, ‘He is in God’s school; don’t be troubled about him, as if God might overlook and forget him. He will see to all that concerns him. He has made him, and he loves him, and he is doing and will do his very best for him.”

— George MacDonald, Knowing the Heart of God, p. 23-24

The Way Home

Faith, God, Growth, Guidance 0

Religion is simply the way home to the Father. Because of our unchildlikeness, the true way is difficult enough — uphill, steep, but there is fresh life with every surmounted height, a purer air gained, more life for more climbing. But the path that is not the true one is not therefore an easy one. Uphill work is hard walking, but through a bog is worse.

— George MacDonald, Knowing the Heart of God, p. 22

Restful Thankfulness

Acceptance, Faith, God, Gratitude, Letting Go 0

When we rest in God, we begin to have a different experience of God. It becomes less about our striving and more about our receiving. God is the great giver, and too often we are too busy and too self-driven to be able to receive. We ask for help, but then we hurry blindly on, and when our help arrives, we do not pause to acknowledge its source, we just grab for it and keep on moving. “God help me” we pray, but when God does, we are often too preoccupied to say “Thank you.”

A friend of mine is worried about money. She is afraid of ending up out on the street. Each month she worries about where her rent money will come from. Each month her rent money does come. God opens some new door to her, and the flow enters where least expected. My friend does not thank God for this continued support. She is focused, always, on her notion that the support will soon stop. In this way, there is no way that God can ever do enough for her. No matter what miracles occur, she always wants more. Wanting more, she is blind to the fact that what she has been given time and time again is enough. We do not want enough. We want more.

— Julia Cameron, Faith and Will, p. 90-91

Real Belief

Faith, God, Obedience 0

Is Christianity a system of articles of belief? Never. It would be better for a man to hold the most obnoxious untruths, opinions the most irreverent, if at the same time he lived in the faith of the Son of God, that is trusted in God as the Son of God trusted in him, than for him to hold every formula of belief perfectly true, and yet know nothing of a daily life and walk with God. The one, holding doctrines of devils, is yet a child of God. The other, holding doctrines of Christ is of the world — yes, of the devil.

To hold to a doctrine or an opinion with the intellect alone is not to believe it. A man’s real belief is that which he lives by. If a man lives by the love of God, and obedience to God’s law, as far as he has recognized it, then whatever wrong opinions the man holds are outside of him. They are not true, and they cannot really be inside any good man. At the same time, no matter how many correct opinions another man holds, if he does not order his life by the law of God’s love, he is not a child of God. What a man believes is the thing he does, not the thing he thinks.

— George MacDonald, Knowing the Heart of God, p. 20

Nothing Random

Acceptance, Faith, God, Gratitude, Growth, Guidance, Letting Go 0

Ours is an abundant world, but it seldom seems that way when we are demanding more. When we say “Thy will, not mine,” we are saying, “This is enough,” and in saying that, we may actually have that experience. This is an experience of acceptance, and acceptance is usually the sticking point when it comes to our will versus God’s. We would accept God’s will for us if we could just see where it was going. If God would just give us a glimpse of what we were being prepared for, then we would go along with God’s preparations. If we are all indeed being brought along like fighters, then there is nothing random in what we are given. We are given just what we need at all times to further our spiritual growth, fund our spiritual development.

— Julia Cameron, Faith and Will, p. 89

A Personal God

Faith, God, Guidance 0

It is the idea of God “being involved” that is often the sticking point. Many of us prefer to think of our relationship with God as being unrequited. Most of us are not really comfortable with the idea of a personal God, one interested in all our affairs. We think that there are areas beneath God’s concern, and those are the areas, particularly finance and romance, that we tend to try to run ourselves. Very often it is the area that we declare beneath God’s interest where we could use the most divine help. Stubbornly isolationist, often more than a little self-pitying, rather than open our eyes to the help all around us, help that has been divinely sent, we try to go it alone. In so doing, we shut out many of the intended helpers sent in our direction.

When a gift horse is sent our way, we not only look it in the mouth, we slap it on the rump to get it out of our vicinity as soon as possible. “It’s just a coincidence,” we say when something transpires that seems an answered prayer.

— Julia Cameron, Faith and Will, p. 78