A Hilltop Experience

“A man, full of his own misery, walked alone along a deserted roadway. What was the point of living if year after year were to be filled with this pain and meaninglessness? Better end it than live such a life. But why should we exist for such darkness, why should we have been brought into being anyway? Thinking thus he climbed a small hillock and looked across bleak winter fields. Apart from a few black specks of birds against the evening sky no other sign of life could be seen. Outwardly the view was to him as lifeless, cold and lonely as his inner world.

Then, in the midst of this blackness of soul, there came to his lips as if of themselves, strange words. Strange because he was not given to repeating them.

Our Father, which art in Heaven,

Hallowed be Thy name.

Thy Kingdom come,

Thy will be done

In earth as it is . .

But he never finished them, for suddenly a love burst upon him which seemed to bathe him through and through, and he wept to be so embraced by it. Then the Love spoke, yet there was no voice, and it showed him things, yet there were no pictures. And what he saw was his life stretching away ahead of him, year after year, as full of the difficulties and restrictions and emptiness as he had been running away from. Then the voice said ‘None of this shall be taken away, for I give you life and its events out of love. It is given that through it you come slowly to develop as a person. For through difficulties you learn strength and discover your own wonder, and through life as a whole you slowly find this Love I have waiting for you. Then, when you are one with the Love, you can take part with Me in Creation.”