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Dalton Roberts
--My Sunday Journal

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YOU ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE
Jan. 25, 2002

 My friend Virginia Guffin was a Christian Science practitioner and a fine writer. In one of her writings she said, "Sometimes people with hearts full of love feel so responsible for a child or a spouse or a parent or a friend that the burden becomes almost more than they can bear."

She went on to tell how deeply distressed she became over a family member. She was obsessed with her welfare and felt totally responsible. A friend in her personal spiritual support group – and we all have our own – told her she was confusing love with worry. She told her only God is responsible for our loved ones and the sin of worry can never contribute to a good outcome.

In this or a million other areas of life where we inject the negative energy of our worry, we are reducing the chances of positive outcomes. Worry is a manifestation of fear and all fear is the opposite of faith. Faith is the steadfast attitude that a challenge can be met and manifests in specific actions, not in stewing, fretful reactions.

Never describe your worry as love. Un-see that connection and re-see love as creative action of some kind designed to improve the situation. Clearly see it is an impediment to a solution that can be erased from the blackboard of your mind and erase it. Right where you erase it, replace it with even a single step you are taking in faith.

Faith is not the making of ignorant assumptions. It is the careful crafting of the highest possible ideals to which we can clearly commit ourselves.

 SHAKE YOUR WAY

 When I was teaching, I explained that the amoeba had no spine and travels by extending it's protoplasm in the form of tentacles. Then it merely shakes its body protoplasm in the direction of the tentacles.

On a test I asked how the amoeba moves, and one student wrote, "He just shakes the way he wants to go." I gave him credit for his answer.We're are like the amoeba. We never get anywhere until we shake the way we want to go. We can sit still and shiver and quiver and never move one inch in the direction of our dreams. We extend tentacles of faith, ever reaching toward our goals. As the tentacles find firm ground to move upon, they pull the full thrust of our being in the right direction.

Just because we shake does not mean we have no faith. Every faith that has ever resulted in a magnificent outcome, whether it was the Pyramids or a better gall bladder operation, started on shaky legs – extending a finger of faith to probe for possibilities. Each successful probe of a faith finger motivates the whole being to move forward.