The Snowflake Chronicles

Coincidence

1 Masa’il 163 B.E. - December 12, 2006

I enjoy coincidences, the always occur at the most interesting times and difficult times in my life. They usually contain a message or a warning depending on whether I’m going through the normal everyday tests or if I’m being more difficult mental test. Lately, the majority of tests I’ve been facing are mental, with the biggest component being my self-talk. OK, my self-talk can get extremely negative sometimes.

Anyway going on with the coincidence, my mother and I were the Feast Hosts for the Feast of Masa’il (Questions). I picked out the feast readings and mom fixed the food for the social portion. Now when I pick out the reading for a feast or any spiritual gathering, I decide on a subject and then search the Ocean library module for the readings. The topic I chose for this feast was teaching. At feast, I got people to read the scriptures and I took the opening and closing prayers.

When I read the opening prayer, I noticed that it was the same prayer I had picked out for the spiritual portion of the two Ruhi courses I’m taking. Now when I picked the prayer for the feast reading, I had just copied and pasted the text of the prayer into word so that I could print it off and hadn’t taken notice of which prayer I’d picked.

The prayer, in addition, to being a prayer for teaching also refers to tests and trials; specifically it mentions “the tempestuous winds of tests”. It sounds like what I’ve gone through for the past few days. So this time I keeping a copy of the prayer right next to my computer. I think I’ve gotten the messages loud and clear. So rather that listen to my self-talk, I’ll say the prayer. I found out long ago that when I read and recite the prayer revealed by Baha’u’llah, my negative self-talk has not effect on me and I worry less.