Seedlings (Paperback or Softback)

Sending Out an S.O.S.

We all know what to do if we get stranded on an island in the middle of the ocean: put a message in a bottle and throw it out to sea. Then begin to pray. The action comes first, because we need to do all we can do before we ask for help.

Monica and I have been engaged in a service which turns this strategy on its head. In the old scenario, the one who needs help throws out the message. We, on the other hand, throw out a helpful message, hoping it might wash up on some distant shore in time to help a person who can benefit from it.

Help comes in many forms, maybe even to someone who never would have thought to seek it. It can be as simple as provoking a welcome smile. Tell me you've never needed that. Other times, it comes just as a friend's dilemma is on your mind, reinforces your idea for how to assist.

Occasionally, we receive an email from a Seedlings reader telling us how a story has arrived in a timely fashion in their life, coinciding with a larger issue they were dealing with. We humans are in a key position to be material conduits for spiritual assistance.

Coinciding? There are no coincidences. God works in mysterious ways, creates, or takes advantage of anything that might assist one of his children. Countless celestial hosts hover around us, sometimes planting seeds in our minds that will one day be fruitful in a life, sometimes harvesting that fruit to share with someone else never once even encountered by the farmer. The act is ours, the consequences God's. And small acts can have huge impacts.

To be of service. That is the engine of a spirit driven life. What Monica and I offer is just another service. If it's useful... wonderful. If it's not, nothing has been lost; and who knows what the future may hold? You're free to use it one day or not, as needed.

But we implore you to join in this service. Please broadly spread any story that touches you; there may be someone, somewhere who will find it through a friend, on a bulletin board, in a church flyer or in the local paper. It might just fill a need in someone's life. And of course, once these stories leave the garden, they are feral, owned by no one, free to be translated, transformed, restated, quoted from... use your imagination. I know we do.

Spiritual Opportunities Surround us.

Fifty years ago, I was having a talk with a neighbor. I was in a rock band at the time, and Bob used to sit and listen to us practice. Usually we only shared mis-delivered mail or maybe a lawnmower. Somehow the conversation turned to religion. He had just come across a big blue book that dealt with topics as varied as religion, history, astronomy, human relationships, and our Father's promise to join him in eternal life. As a scientist, he had found it to be accurate far ahead of the time in which it was published, and he reasoned that it was probably accurate about religion as well. I was a year into my search for deeper spiritual truth. Bob was just beginning his. He took me into his house and showed me The Urantia Book. My memory of sitting in a chair in his house reading for three days is still fresh. I soon ordered my own, and never stopped reading. As a child, I had a relationship with God as a member of his church family. Now, I was beginning to build a personal relationship with Father. Both experiences are the foundations of my spiritual life. I learned that Jesus gave us his Spirit of Truth, his spiritual guide to surely lead me to him. It was this spirit that affirmed the truth I was discovering. Later, in a dream, I saw Father's promise illuminated. It was an indelible image of two rainbows side by side. One represented my mortal self, the other God's pure spirit fragment, my Thought Adjuster. They were joining at the base in a blue fusion. It was a promise that I would one day fuse with a fragment of God as a new spiritual being with eternal life in a loving universe. Now, fifty years later, I know God as a Father. I feel his absolute love every day, yearn for it, desire to share it with others. His love is at the core of my being, powering my life goal of serving my sisters and brothers, writing stories about spiritual growth.Mostly, Father is my friend. All he asks of me is that I extend that friendship to all his other children, my sisters and brothers, whether friends or adversaries. As members of his family, we are told to share his love, let it pass through us to make this a better world.