A few days ago, my son Nathan, 5, was walking around the house with an imaginary wand. He went over to Olivia, 3, and took his "wand" and waved it over her head and commanded her to turn into an adult. Then he went into his room with his magic wand and commanded his toys to be cleaned up. Next, he turned the wand on himself and turned into Superman complete with larger muscles. It was really fascinating to watch him play with this imaginary "power". Nathan said he would now use his magic wand for all kinds of things like getting his teeth brushed and drinking his milk. He came up with a little mantra for making the wand do its magic. It went something like this, Abra Cadabra, Callamazoo! Magic Wand, do what you do! Many children's stories are about special powers. Spiderman can climb walls and Harry Potter once made his own hair grow back after a bad haircut - (I want that power). Dorothy clicks her red shoes and goes home, and a simple kiss wakes up a sleeping beauty. In many of these wonderful stories of magical powers, the characters are only at their best when using their own wand. Stories that demonstrate special "spells", special magic abilities, and the use of imagination really draw children in and cause them to stretch their own imagination. Children love special powers and magic. What child doesn't love to have a quarter pulled out of their ear? What child wouldn't want to rub a magic lamp and have three wishes come true?
All of my children have had discussions about "special powers" and it has caused me to reflect upon whether or not, we have been given certain powers to use in our own lives. What is it about God and humanity that is reflected in these stories of superheroes, witches, and wizards. Is there a part of us that is "powerful" and "magical"? Do we have a "magic wand" at our own disposal? My oldest daughter once referred to Jesus as a superhero. She made the case that he could heal people just by touching them. He told people to ask for what they wanted and they would receive it, if done in his name. She continued by saying that he had enough power to rise from the dead and change water into wine. Clare continued by saying that he didn't really have a wand, but he had God. She had therefore concluded that God was his "special power".
Our "magic wand" is our ability to think and imagine how we want our life to look like. The power that flows through that "wand" is our belief in what we want to see manifested in our lives, and the power of prayer to bring it to fruition.Because we came from God, we have inherited certain "powers" similar to the wands that a fairy Godmother might hold. The "magic wand" that we have access to involves first, and foremost, free will. We can use the "wand of free will" for good or for evil. God respects our ability to choose our path in life. God loved us too much to make robots of us, and therefore the "magic" we all have been gifted with is our ability to choose what kind of life we want to live. Using the power of our "magic wand" means first getting clear about what it is that we truly want. It is the power of the purest desire that lies in our hearts that makes our "magic wand" work for us. Getting clear and specific about what we need, all "magic" wands must be waved by their owner in order for them to produce their "magic". Waving our "wands", it is the spoken word that makes our desire real and felt. Anytime we speak about what we want, we give our desires the power of the "wand". In my senior year of high school, the desire of my heart was to become a teacher. Every time I spoke about that desire I increased its power to manifest in my life. And, after 5 years of college, I became a teacher. Speaking about our desires gives them validation, possibility, and the ability to manifest themselves within divine order. It is not enough to hold a desire in your heart. You must wave your "wand" through the spoken word. Jesus gave us a formula for this divine power to manifest our heart's desire. We know it as Ask, Believe, and Receive.
The asking lies in our knowing our heart's desire. It is all about figuring out what we love. The believing is the ability to speak about what we love and want, and to feel what it would be like to have that. Using my imagination, I could see myself as a teacher. I imagined having my own classroom, and what it would be like to see a child understand a concept that I was trying to teach them. Receiving is surrendering it all to God and believing that we deserve the happiness that is about to come to us. We surrender the timing, the details, and the outcome to God, all the while trusting that whatever it is that we seek from within our hearts, we will find it in the physical world. The "magic' in our wand comes from the power of the heart. That magic is love. Everyone and everything gravitates toward love, the greatest force of the universe. It is love that gives our wands power. If what we desire comes from genuine love- a love that is of happiness, healing, and being of service, then God is a part of that. When we learn how to wave that wand, we will start to see that we all are a part of a divine plan, a mystical, magical world empowered by a loving God. Everyone has inherited a part of this divine power because we are God's child.
Harry Potter goes to Hogwarts to learn what "powers" he contained. We go to God in prayer, in the School of Silence, to learn what is in our hearts, to learn how to love, and to gain clarity and insight into using the divine power of love to manifest what is in our hearts. When everyone claims their divine power, our world will change. Jesus knew his divinity. And his entire life was spent trying to help us know our part of divinity. Everyone will feel God as "Father" as his name is made holy by the way we live. The kingdom will reign here as God's Will is done through us in this lifetime. Our daily bread will always be available and abundant. Forgiveness will become the cornerstone of our lives, and forever following the path of our hearts, we will never know temptation. or be delivered to evil. For we are the kingdom's inheritors, both now and beyond. We contain the power of God to manifest infinite glory everywhere, and in all things, when we learn how to direct the flow of divine love in our own lives.
If we want to know whether or not we are using our "magic wands" for good, all we have to do is look around us. Everything that we experience in the physical world is telling the story of our lives to us. Everything is reflecting how we have used our wands, and whether or not we need to learn how to better use the divine power of love in our life. For example, a woman who is married to a man that abuses her is reflecting back to her that she is not loving herself to her fullest capability. Any woman who fully loves and accepts herself for who she is will not allow herself to become part of an abusive situation. The wand she waved was misdirected, misguided, and lacking the fullest expression of love. Now she needs to use her "wand" to bring the deepest desire of her heart, which is to heal her brokenness, and learn to fill her heart with genuine love of self. Once she does that, she can, with full awareness, use her wand to manifest the love she deserves with God's help, and she has truly manifested a part of the kingdom in her life now.
Using our "wands" should be a kind of spiritual adventure. All of us have something we want to improve about ourselves and our lives. And the trick is figuring out what really lies in the deepest part of our hearts. Once we have discerned that, we can start to ask God for direction and guidance in using our wands in order to bring into the physical world what already exists in the world of our hearts. The part of the wand that is the most tricky to figure out, is leaving all the details to God. We must do what we need to do, and then leave all the rest to God, including the outcome. That is the "magic". There is a sign in my husband's office that reads, "Work as if everything depended upon you. Pray as if everything depended upon God." Learning how to use our spiritual, mystical, magical wands means taking action when necessary, praying without ceasing, and then putting the entire outcome in God's hands. It is the last part that causes most of us to struggle. Sometimes our "action" does nothing but get in God's way. Sometimes our impatience sucks the magic right out of the wand, and sometimes our lack of belief causes us to want to give up. We try waving our wands this way, and then we try waving our wands that way, until we have worn ourselves out and thrown our wands in the air and back at God.
The lesson we always learn is that it isn't us who gives the wand power. It is our willingness to hold it, direct it, and use it according to Love's fulfillment that allows the power of God to flow through our wand and manifests what is in our heart-space into the larger space of the world. Just as I am finishing writing this, Nathan has put his Spiderman cuff on his arm and says that he is wearing it to the Y today so that he can make webs in order to move through the gym faster. He says he is going to save the world. Remarkable! That is the sole purpose of why we use our mystical, magical wands in the first place. There is a superhero in all of us that has a need to save the world.
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