"...for this is the will of God..."

"Thank you for this perfect day
Truth and Love point out the way
Calm and exalted, each evening I pray:
Thank you for this perfect day."

I really don't know where this song/prayer originates*.  We sing it at camp as a round, I sing it to my daughters each bedtime at the end of our nightly lullabies and hymns…I love it.  It is simple and it brings me back to a settled, centered place of peace.

Each time I sing this song I feel like I am standing in the middle of a pure and perfect meadow.  There is only one tree standing on a rise in the middle of an undulating field of green.  The sun is shining, there are puffy clouds drifting across a sky so clear and blue you wonder if it will drip spring water if you reach out your finger and plunge beneath the surface of its fragile skin. The air that blows across your face barely ruffles your hair…but it is there…cool and dry like a silk chemise gliding gently across your skin.

The purity of its message came one day when I was desperate for direction.  I had studied, prayed, pleaded, yielded, listened, treated my own resistance, denied the belief in any outside influence, thought-taking, or speculation about my life, and prayed some more…and still nothing…or at least not anything I felt was even akin to the kind of guidance I was seeking.

In the silence that followed all my "doing" I heard a very gentle little bird-like message "Not my will, but Thine be done". 

"Okay," I thought, "that is exactly what I have been praying for all along…not my will but God's will."  But the simple purity of the voice and the message echoed again.  "Not my will, but Thine be done." 

I was about as frustrated as I could be.  Isn't this exactly what was behind all of my praying, listening, yielding…I was waiting to know what God's will was…once I knew it, I would be happy to do it. 

I gave up…and went out to the mailbox to get the mail. 

A while later I was sorting through some papers and old notes in a folder when I came across a scrap of paper, actually a donation envelope from the pew rack at church. I had used it to write down a quote, something that had been read from the Scriptures that Sunday and I wanted to revisit.  The scrawling, made with a stubby little pencil I also found in the rack, was barely visible having traveled from the pocket of my sweater, to my wallet and then finally to the folder where I kept notes to myself I wanted to return to and ponder…later.

On it was this statement from I Thessalonians,

"In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God…"

It was a pure ray of light to my heart.  If I didn't know what to do, if I felt the need for direction, guidance, mission, purpose…to know God's will…all I needed to do was "give thanks". 

Why of course that made absolute sense.  If, as Mary Baker Eddy states in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,

"All that is made is the work of God, and all is good.
We leave this brief glorious history of spiritual creation
…in the hands of God, not of man,
in the keeping of Spirit, not of matter, --
joyfully acknowledging now and forever God's supremacy,
omnipotence, and omnipresence."

So, if I were to break it down into a simpler form (as I've said before, diagramming sentences in grade school…and as an primary school teacher…is something that I have actually used…go figure, I thought learning sentence structure was ridiculous when Mrs. Kearns required it in fourth grade.  What promise does that hold for geometry and algebra?) So, what does that mean for me in this case?  Well…if I were to boil the above statement down, for me, it reads:

All that is…is the work of God…and is good.  Leave it (all) in the hands of God, not man (even your own)…what you get to do is joyfully acknowledge God's supremacy, omnipotence and omnipresence. 

Okay, so once you have acknowledged that your God (who is your Father and loves you) is supreme, has all the power in the universe, and is always present and only makes good…things happen, what is there left to do but give thanks? We aren't creators...we don't create a thought, an opportunity, a desire, a mistake, a mental environment conducive for inspiration...or a will. God is the only Cause and Creator. I can trust that.

So now, when I sing…I sing because I am grateful.  When I want to know God's will…well, I don't fret because I do know it…it is for me to be grateful.  The rest I leave to Him…when He wants me to know it too, He will make it so imperatively clear to my heart (His province) that any other path will seem unthinkable.  Hmmm…maybe the choices I think I am making aren't really choices at all.  In fact, if the only way to do His will is to give thanks…life is pretty sweet…like a meadow with a tree, a blue sky to lie under and some puffy little clouds to find giraffes, dinosaurs, bunnies…and the hand of God, in the lives of His children - His universe...to love and be grateful for.  Could this be the mental image that Michaelangelo was trying to reproduce on the celing of the Sistine chapel?  Could it really be that simple?

I've got to remember this more often...
Kate

[*thanks Maria for letting me know the above song is: "Evening Round" by Madora Kibbe]