I have been working hard to stand in higher truth even when it is hard. Last Sunday when wildfires broke out in Sedona on the very spot I hiked one week prior, it wasn’t easy. The fire was started by a careless person who ignored the laws and left a campfire to smolder. It has burned over 3000 acres so far, among them some of my most beloved hiking trails. Oaks, ponderosa pines, and maples are burning, not to mention the loss of animals, and the scarred landscape, threatened houses and businesses… and yet… the angels tell me to Love, Love, and Love more. I caught myself wanting to slide into judgment of the person who started it. I still don’t think it was right. And yet the angels told me to see as God sees. To accept without judgment. To know that while I certainly don’t support such actions I must avoid “casting stones.”
Its hard sometimes to refrain from judgement. Its so easy to think we would “never” do something like that and yet the angels reminded me of when I was a child and how my brother and I shot “bottle rockets” back when they were still legal, at the house of a neighbor who had yelled at us. I had conveniently forgotten. We were lucky we didn’t start any catastrophic fires back then. My parents would have stopped me had they known. “None of you,” the angels told me, “is separate from another.” “You have all had brilliant moments and acts of sheer carelessness.” There but for the grace of God go I, I thought. I released my judgment and focused my attention and prayers on asking for rain to come quickly, winds to be favorable, and grace to help everyone get through it. The energy was far better spent in a positive direction than it would have been if wasted on judgment.
So when you find you are tempted to judge, no matter how awful the action of the other, remember, we’ve all done things that aren’t perfect, and our energy is far better spent focused on what we DO want in our lives than what we don’t.
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