My disciples asked me to teach them to pray and I did. You are familiar with the lesson, part of which says, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Do you use this idea as a standard by which to judge your own prayers? Do your prayers contribute to this goal? It is one thing to incorporate this broad policy statement into your prayers. It is another to break it down into specific requests that serve this outcome and taking action accordingly. Blessed are those who pray according to my will in concrete terms, for they shall see the answers to their prayers.

Are you reassured by the fact that the Holy Spirit is known as the Comforter? Yet it was this same Spirit that led me into the wilderness for 40 days to fast and be tempted by the accuser. Does this sound like your idea of comfort? So this Spirit performs multiple roles. Are you in greater need of comfort or challenge? Comfort makes you feel better in your situation but challenge stretches you to the limit of your capabilities and enlarges them. How else do you grow in your capacity? Don’t you seek out challenges for yourself for this very purpose? The Holy Spirit can provide them too.

Do you see your religion and your spirituality as the same thing, or is there a difference? You could think of your religion as a container for your spirituality. The Bible refers to spirit as the wind which blows where it will. Have you met people who claim spirituality but reject every religious tradition? Do they seem adrift, blown about with every wind of doctrine, having no stable foundation to stand on? A kite requires wind to hold it aloft but it will only fly if it is tethered to the ground.

Do you see the world in black and white? This is a very stark view and to see the world in these terms is not something to strive for. Even in early photography there was a gray scale between black and white. But I created a world that goes beyond black and white and even gray to include color. You refer to this as the spectrum of visible light. So I have opened the door for a rich scale of diversity. Do you see the same concept of a spectrum present in things other than electromagnetism? In what other areas are you able to see subtlety and nuance rather than two fixed rigid categories?