Recently a close friend of mine made the statement, “I feel overwhelmed and spiritually unattached.”

I think we can all relate to these words, probably on many levels, when there was some circumstance in life that seemed beyond our ability to handle. Then, all we’re left with is the feeling of a spiritual longing, a desire for a tangible connectedness to God, Buddha, Mohammed, The God and Goddess, guardian angels, Mother Earth, Infinite intelligence, or any name to which we can best relate.

To find an all-encompassing name without prejudice toward any one belief system, for the rest of the article I’ll use the word “God” to refer to whatever or whoever it is that you pray to for assistance and guidance.

At those times in your life, when you turned to God in prayer for help and guidance with some crisis in your life, did you get an answer? Did you get help?

It’s a normal reaction to conclude that when we do experience divine intervention for what we’ve prayed for, we assume all is well in the heavens. We think, “Woo Hoo! Miracles really do happen. God does exist!” However, when the answer or the assistance is something other or less then what we desired, do we then doubt God’s existence or believe that somehow we’ve fallen out of favor, because we’re somehow not right with God?

Somewhere along the way we seem to have blurred our traditional beliefs with metaphysical concepts. We jump through religious hoops or beseech God into favoring us, yet we think we can manifest anything simply by aligning our thoughts, visualizing hard enough, dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s, and then instructing the universe, “If I do this over here I’ll get that result over there, in my way, in my time.”

But are we considering, even slightly, that we might be wrong spiritually? Are we contemplating the words “Thy will be done?”

Positive manifestation, prayer, and faith are intertwined. OK, maybe that’s kind of a “duh” statement. It’s a given that most of us don’t believe that faith consists of idly sitting by doing nothing while demanding that God conjure up miracles, come save you, or to come clean up your mess. The universe has reminded us time and again of our own personal responsibility, and that we create our own happiness or unhappiness as we live in harmony or discord with natural physical and spiritual laws.

If you’ve made choices that have put you into a bad place, don’t yell at God to bail you out. If we’re going to seek guidance and assistance from the universe, shouldn’t we trust that we will “in the universe’s time” receive the result that is truly best suited for our needs, and not necessarily what our egos see fit.

Faith isn’t sitting around doing nothing while expecting the heavens to fix everything for you. Not everything is preordained and up to the universe. Rather, faith is living by The Golden Rule, and knowing that karma, “What goes around, comes around,” cause and effect, or whatever name you want to give it, exists.

Whether we believe in God or not is irrelevant as to whether or not God or Divine intervention exist. For that matter, who’s to say for sure that believing in God will inspire that entity to like you or act on your behalf. All I know for sure is that when we walk in faith, then things are in divine order, and when we have a positive attitude, things will get better, as it is just as true of the opposite.

So I for one would like to recognize Divine Spirit for its assistance, no matter how little or how much, by simply saying “Thank you for your divine intervention, whoever you are.”

Rev. Steven McClain is Pastor of The New River Valley Metaphysical Chapel in Radford.