I want to blow your mind, and you don’t have to believe me.

You are forgiven by a mercy beyond your grief, and belief.

All of the self-afflicting thoughts and emotions you feel can actually be helped, and you are not the only one who has felt them.

Not a single person from Adam to now is perfect. We all have done things that we regret, and we all have done things where we wonder if there were the cause of a falling out, or what have you.

We know we should forgive others, and yet far too often we fail to accept forgiveness for ourselves.

Despite this truth for both parties,

To err is human; to forgive, divine.

Essay on Criticism, Alexander Pope

I think the issue more often is how when we do something off, or perceived as wrong (even if it isn’t), the sense of self-embarrassment that lingers is the most cutting thing. Maybe it isn’t the rule… it’s just what I find in myself.

I’ve even known people to become the very thing they hate, in order to take power against that terrible outcast feeling. In doing this… they complete the circle of self-abandonment, even if they reap temporary rewards from it.

Why split your own soul against its better nature? Ease?

It is easy to be brash. It is easy to avoid and run from something. It is easy to hide instead of facing the music.

AND… it doesn’t help someone that society almost damns they who hold themselves accountable. Being sly is praised and worshiped when it shouldn’t be.

For all of the praise craft and deception receive… they never bring about what we are really trying to achieve in the first place — unity.

So in human nature without integrity, we will use the easiest means we can in order to accomplish something impressive, in order to try to gain acceptance, or to boost the ego.

In submitting to these ways, we actually do the opposite. We forsake ourselves.

No matter what Jesus faced. He never forsook the character of his Father, and the Spirit within.

And though some brutally tortured him for how he was different; how he was, and still is, a man of all peace, and the man of all honor. He did not retaliate with the same venom he received.

*I think politics could do well to learn that lesson.*

Anyway, the sum of the thing is to find acceptance we often to unacceptable things to try to get it.

It’s insane, for the Holy Spirit has always loved us, accepted us, and embraced us in truth.

To forsake ourselves is to forsake her and God within us. Whatever community we gain from deeds of malice and inconsideration, or just damn well leaving grace behind, will not be allowed to eat at the table of Christ. In this life and the next.

For why should God accept us (to an event) when we can’t even accept him in us? I certainly wouldn’t allow someone destructive in my house even though I love them, for example.

He will always and forever love and accept the true self in us in him, for it is kind and good.

It’s only when WE accept that embrace which is already there that we can find acceptance of the self, and forgiveness beyond compare.

For what does it mean for him to say to us “You are forgiven of all misdeeds and iniquity my child”, and in turn we choose not to go hard and deep with it; then we start soul-smacking someone else in some way when the load was taken off of our hearts in his grace?

In his house family is family, the only reason God won’t accept someone’s presence in his midst is when they would be genuinely destructive to others before him.

Yet, should they change in truth, they are more than welcome.

Some can leave us on bad terms and be fine with it.

It isn’t so before the Lord of glory.

We aren’t inherently disgusting. Our self-perceptions (almost inherited it acts like, I’m not sure) are often disfigured though. We must learn to forgive those. We must put them away. We don’t have to feel good about ourselves first in order to move on, but we must make that terrifying choice to leave it behind.

Only than can we embrace ourselves, before ourselves, and before the King of light, as forgiven ones.

Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old things have passed away. Behold, all things have become new.

2 Corinthians 5:17, WEB

As the Father accepted the Son when he said “Father into thy hands I commit my spirit”, in the same fashion, he accepts us as his own sons and daughters. We already ALL are, but my goodness do we have a hard time living like that’s true, and treating each other in the same way.

Respect?

Haha. I could tell some stories of things I have seen in my field. I’ve seen customers irate for no good reason. I’ve seen it from both sides, and it never ceases to amaze me how coarse and off-kilter people can be with dealing with someone who they asked to provide an offered service.

You can do the best, most honest job in the world, and sometimes you will be treated as a nuisance and a pest that needs to be squashed.

Such people aren’t worth trying to get along with usually.

BUT….

Even they can be forgiven.

For us and for God, even if we can’t accept how someone acts in our presence, and acts towards us… we can still acknowledge them as Children of the Father. They may need a good knockout by his Light one day for sure, but we don’t need to outcast the hope he gives us for them, even if we are to depart from their lives.

Regardless of one’s orientation and nuance that we may need to adjust to… I hope this can be kept in mind.

But Jesus said, “Don’t forbid him, for there is no one who will do a mighty work in my name, and be able quickly to speak evil of me. For whoever is not against us is on our side. For whoever will give you a cup of water to drink in my name, because you are Christ’s, most certainly I tell you, he will in no way lose his reward.

Mark 9:38-41, WEB

Now… Forgiven One, shall you forgive in turn?