All the things that you and the world say are unfortunate, how do you know they are not blessings? They may be blessings disguised or blessing deferred. When you have not yet read the whole book, how do you know with certainty how the book ends?

Even tears are a blessing. They are a blessing as much as laughter. Of course, you may prefer laughter when it rings pure joy, and yet what makes you so sure that laughter is good and tears of sorrow are not?

What will you make of today? What will you do with it? Consider life today your oven. What will you bake in it today?

Today does come to you, and it brings what it brings with it. It may well bring surprises for you. The day is innocent. It is not responsible for what it brings, for the day is an innocent carrier. What do you bring to the day, beloveds? As the receiver of the day, do you not have some say as to how you walk through it? Whatever the day today carries, you carry it as well. It is up to you how you greet the day and what you make of it. You can make of it what you will.

Will you consider that every single thing that occurs holds its blessing, even those matters that are clearly tragic in the world's eyes, even those events that are totally incomprehensible to you? You cannot see any value in a tragic event. No one may see any value, and yet in the long haul I am telling you that there is a value. Beloveds, in any case, it behooves you to accept this idea. Seen or unseen, trusting in what I say holds you in good stead. Bear in mind that which you may perceive may not serve you.

It is not exactly your duty to be happy, because happiness does not come on demand. Nor is happiness exactly your purpose because happiness rather tags along. What you can do right now in this moment is to recognize that happiness is your birthright. Simple happiness, beloveds, belongs to you. Call it what you will, it is yours, and you are meant to have it. Have the idea, beloveds, that you are on vacation in life. Perhaps you have been feeling that you are on sufferance, and so you have been trudging along the streets of life when you can just as well skip and dance.

Difficulties seem to all come from the outside. Your pen doesn't work. The computer isn't behaving. Customer service puts you on hold and you wait and wait. The weather does not always cooperate and so on.

Go to sleep at night with the thought of Me on your tongue. Rise in the morning with a thought of Me in your ears. I am always in your heart. Now I rise to your mind as well. Now I get your attention. Attend to Me in your thought.

Quite naturally you want good things in life to happen, and you are delighted when they do, when they come to you as gifts, perhaps as surprise falling from the sky. By the same token, you are crestfallen when great surprises of joy do not arise and seeming impediments wrap themselves around you instead. You see what you welcome as tributes to yourself, and those which you do not welcome as scoldings. Is that not so? You may live life according to a sense of reward and punishment.

Do not covet is fine to say. Certainly, it is good advice. But it misses the issue. Only from sense of lack does covetousness arise.

When sense of lack is replaced with awareness of plenty, covetousness is replaced with generosity. Needing and giving are but two sides of the same coin. You may need to be instructed in awareness of the wealth that is yours.

Who would grab when he sees there is enough to go around? When he sees abundance spilling over, what would he feel denied about? What would he possibly want to draw to himself and not to another?

Lift up your head and know I am God. Know I am the institutor of you. You were born from My heart. You are a beautiful soul on Earth dressed up as a Human Being. Yet neither your soul nor your physicalness is separate one from the other. It may be hard for you to reconcile these two aspects, but not for Me.

Remember My promise to shower blessings upon you. When it rains, remember this pledge I make to you. When the sun shines, remember My vow to you. Let everything be a reminder to you. Think of Me. Remember Me and the blessings I will inevitably pour upon you. Know this. Know this more than you know anything else.