The Lilies Of The Field

Good Evening friends.

It is indeed with joy that we come into your midsts once again speaking to you for a few short minuets, trying to give you some understanding of yourselves, of your life, of God.

The reading which you had tonight (one of Helen Styner-Rice's poems) was a reading about prayer. Have you found out how difficult it is really to pray in sincerity? Have you tried to sit and meditate, letting your mind free itself from the everyday cares and worries of your busy lives, seeking for a short while to link up with Spirit, sending out your prayers of thankfulness, thankfulness for all the surroundings that you have, thankfulness for the blessings that you receive, thankfulness for your homes and your loved ones, thankfulness for all the joys that there are in life, and thankfulness to for the difficulties that you face, for the obstacles that you come up against, for the prejudices that you meet, for the opinions that you have to listen to with which you profoundly disagree, thankfulness for all the events which make up life, life on the earth plane: joys and sorrows, adventures, difficulties, triumphs, successes and failures. They are all a part of your experience on Earth.

You know, because we have told you so often, that you come to the earth plane in order to gain experience. Sometimes it must seem to you that you have a very difficult path to tread, it must appear to you that your life is far more difficult than someone else's; that you have more obstacles, that you meet with more misunderstanding, you have more quarrels, you have many failures and many times you feel in despair. It is then that you must think of prayer, think of linking up with Spirit, linking up with God, because God is Spirit.

As you go through your pathway on Earth you will find that you have opportunities of doing good, you will find that you have opportunities of giving service to others even if it means that your service doesn't receive any reward, even if it means that you are giving of yourself unstintingly and receiving nothing in return. Look upon it in this way. Every soul upon Earth is on a pathway which will one day lead to the Ultimate, which will lead to union with God, whatever God you may term it to be.

You come to the earth plane having chosen a pathway, having chosen certain obstacles, certain difficulties, certain paths that seem to you (now) to be very rocky and perhaps you have strayed from that particular pathway. You have to remember, that as well as the purpose for which you came to the earth plane, that man has got that power which is called free will and sometimes it is as though what you had determined for yourselves cannot be fulfilled because of other people's free will, of other people's choice of pathways. Are you going to despair? Are you going to sit down by the roadside and think that you have gone far enough and cannot do anything to help any more? You have got to learn, learn the lessons of life and perhaps those lessons can only be learned through hardship and suffering.

You can also learn lessons through joys, through welcoming the days as they come, for accepting the circumstances that face you and rejoicing that if your path is more difficult than someone else's it is because you are strong enough to face that.

You have come into a Spiritualist Church. To a certain degree you have accepted Spiritualism and you know that the essence of Spiritualism is the teaching of the truth that man is a spirit in a body of matter and that, when you come to the end of your time on Earth, your body of matter goes back to the earth in some form or another. But your spirit, the essence of you will go on into another phase of existence.

When you come through that doorway that you call death there will be no judgment halls, there will be no God sitting on a throne weighing up the good and the evil that you have done. As we have told you so often the only judge when you come onto our side of life will be yourself. As you look back at your life you will see where you have slipped and where you have triumphed. It will be you that will have to put those things right, it will be you that will be given the opportunity of righting the wrongs that you have done.

What does it matter if you do fail through no fault of your own, or perhaps through your own weakness. You will be given the opportunity of putting right that which has gone wrong in your lives. No one on the earth plane is in a position to judge anyone else.

At this time in your history you have seen over and over again wrongs being done to other people that make you feel angry, that make you feel despondent about mankind, that make you wonder where your world is going to. You do not need me to remind you of the things that are wrong with your world. The viciousness, the crimes, the rise of the dictators, the suppression of religion in various countries, the devastation that is taking place in your forests whereby parts of your world are becoming dessert, the greed of mankind, the selfishness. All these things are a part of life on Earth.

You wonder sometimes that if there is a God why does he allow these things to happen? But it is not God who allows them, it is man who allows them. Remember, we have said before and we do not apologise for repeating it, today, with your means of communication, with your television, with your newspapers, with your wireless, with the means at your disposal, you can hear everything that happens in every corner of the world whereas a hundred, two hundred, two thousand years ago these things would not have been known. Events that took place in one part of your world would have been segregated to that particular part. But today you cannot escape anything that happens in your world.

We have told you before that your life, your world, the earth plane, is just one step upwards; a step which has to be taken by all mankind.

We want to assure you that, although the Spirit World is close to you, we are not here, we do not come back to tell you what you should do and what you should not do; we cannot dot your i's and cross your t's for you. We can only appeal to the God that is within you, praying that that God that is there will work through you, and with you, and will help you to overcome the obstacles that face you.

Spiritualism is a very simple religion; the religion of loving one another; the religion of giving a helping hand where it is wanted; the religion of being ready to advise your fellow men and women when you are asked for it and the religion that will enable you to stand on one side and let people make their own decisions, make their own mistakes. You have no right to judge other people, but you do have a right to send out your love to them, praying that they will make the right decisions, praying that they will put into effect the Golden Rule of "Love One Another".

If you look into the basis of all the religions of the world you will find that there is much that is similar right the way through. Because you have come to a certain stage in life you have come into Spiritualism, you have come into the knowledge of your immortality. So our message to you tonight is very simple, it is just to carry on your pathway, doing the best that you can with the circumstances that you have got. Making the best of the difficulties and enjoying the little things that come to please you.

If we may quote from your Old Book the Master said "Consider the Lilies of the field". That is what you should do as you go through life, consider the Lilies of the field; looking for the joy that there is in the simple things of life, giving that joy to other people, trying to do your best in your own circumstances, praying for the light to be shed upon the whole world.

There will be a dawning coming, there will be the promise of a closer link with Spirit; there will be, ..but when? We cannot answer that! We can only reassure you that your earth plane is in the process of evolution and that the next few centuries will see a difference upon your world.

You have got a duty to the peoples of Earth to give them your love, to try to give them your understanding, even those who seem to you to commit terrible crimes. Remember, God is in them even as He is in you; Spirit is in them even as it is in you.

When you come to the end of your time on Earth then you will come into the Spirit World bringing with you the experiences, bringing with you the love, bringing with you the achievement you have made, bringing with you all the experiences of your life. May that pathway be ever upward.

Goodnight and God bless you all.