Cost

The cost of living is great when we think only of ourselves; when we think only and rely not on our Heavenly Father.  Consumed by desires we move quickly about our days while ignoring our nights as they are spent planning the hours ahead in hopes of controlling that which is uncontrollable...life.  Marked by faith, we need to choose option B, involving faith and letting go of the ego; letting go of the pride to which humanity gravitates. Like gold tested in fire, living a life of faith, reasoning not with the mind but with the heart, allows us to stand before life purified by the Father and prepared to battle the unholiness of life.  We can walk into a faithless situation, fires abound, naysayers screaming yet see only good, see only the Father and answer with hope if we but walk by faith. Easy step is an opportunity to experience faith, to experience the Father, to walk past the flames of desire and execute faith as it was intended to be executed...purely for the soul, without ego, without pride only with the Father by our side loving, guiding and holding. Yet we see the flames from afar, the frighten, they cause intense anxiety and so we turn, we run, we find a different direction until we see different flames and then we turn again, creating another road, creating more anxiety, lessening our freedoms as we become servants of the ego, fashioning pride as our master.  Quickly the cost of living becomes our soul as we compromise our mapped faith, questioning its motives as it mapped roads require crossing the flamed areas. The mind tells us it is unsafe, the ego claims dominance while pride snickers at its own intentions.  If we were to look at pride’s path, from a bird’s eye view, we would discover that it is but a naive circle, and though it feels like a new path, it is just an of path overgrown with thistles and thorns.  This the more threatening of the paths for the grown swollen and the ground unfriendly from the years of passage, yet it is the familiarity which keeps us coming back; the familiarity connected to pride’s fear which keeps us in motion, fearful of any sort of pause or stoppage. To break this cycle we need to rely on faith, rely upon the Father who calls upon us with love opening His heart that we may feel, experience, and understand that the passage of faith sometimes means walking through the daunting fires, it means facing the fears of the mind while overcoming the grip of the ego with allegiance to the heart and temperance of the soul. Trust we must in the Father and, like the gold, we will become pure, 99.9% of the Father: filled with understanding, strengthened by love, committed to faith, and prepared to live unconditionally by the Father’s love while offering the same to all we encounter.  So the next time we encounter the flames of life, we need not return to what we know, what is familiar and run in the other direction; rather we need to face that which frightens and walk through the flames relying upon the gift of faith, relying upon the Father.  The cost of living is only as high as we are willing to pay this we can pay with frustration, anxiety and fear or we can pay by actions of faith and commitments to love. We can constantly change course or we can maintain the course of faith willing to commit to the Father, reject the ego and ignore the pestering of pride.  The cost of living is great for Christ paid this cost with His life now we must maintain His sacrifice by trusting in the Father, by staying the course of love, by living faith and acting upon hope. This is our cost, this is our reward...a life with the Father. Are you willing to pay the cost?