Forgiving All Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable--if anything is excellent or praiseworthy--think about such things ~Saint Paul Saint Paul tells us how we should consider others…. Consider what is true and not only true but nobel….and not only noble but right…and not only right but pure…and not only pure but lovely…and not only lovely but admirable…and not only admirable….but excellent…and not only excellent but worthy of praise…… Many times we look at a perceived fault in another and dwell on that……and justify it because we believe it’s true….we feel it is our job to speak the truth…to reveal the diabolical in the other....yet Paul here says that what we dwell on should not only be true…..but noble….and so on…….. Saint Paul tells us what to take into consideration about others….he tells us to consider what is right about them…not what is wrong about them…beloved as long as another breathes there is more right than wrong about them….the life of God dwells in them…. As we go down the list of what to think about here we get caught up in things too often….let us rather see this as not about thinking about things in particular...this thing or that thing.....…but rather all things….including people….. No matter what things we think about all these qualities are inside them in a measure…for Christ himself is in all things and all things have their being in Christ…in him we live…we move…we have our very beings. This is easier to recognize when we look at things from eternity rather than through the eyes of time….God did not create Satan evil…at one time he stood glorious and praised God….Solomon tells us everything is beautiful in its time and that God has set eternity in our hearts….yet we don’t fathom what God has done from the beginning to the end…Why?....because we don’t see the end at the beginning and beginning at the end…. Rather we look for beginnings and ends of things….rights and wrongs…whites and blacks….here and there….night and day….high and low….. we don’t see that high cannot be without low…or low cannot be without high…they are not separate they are one…but we separate them don’t we?...we divide…we define…we lose the meaning in the definitions…..we think…we judge dualistically. Because we look for beginnings and ends we miss the whole…it has long been known that the first and last impression s are what have the greatest impact on us with other people….yet there is so much more to them than that…..when we look at the first and last we miss experiencing them as they are now….they may no longer be that same person that offended you before…..they cannot be …..for all things continually change…..but when we hold them to be that inside of us we bind them…up on earth as it is in heaven…we bind them within us and in doing so we bind them outside of us…..when we do not forgive…. And forgiving is not only a matter of forgiving all the wrongs…Jesus told us to forgive others but he never used the word "only" ......as if to say only forgive their wrongs....forgiving also involves forgiving all the rights another has done…not to put them in a box of what they have been…..not to imprison them as such….no beloved forgiving means to let them go entirely…letting go of not only all the wrongs but also all the rights…..so that we experience them not as they were but as they are!..... And when we see them as they are we see that everything truly is beautiful in its time…and that the scripture holds true….. May the grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be multiplied unto you as you continue to walk in awareness of his presence in the present moment Selah
Posted on: Sat, 14 Sep 2013 13:34:27 +0000