The dying
(a prayer)
Outside of time you reside O Lord,
for I now pray for all the dying,
in all times and all places,
the young and old,
those who have never known love,
for those who have,
for the rich and the poor,
for those who have done great evil,
for their victims,
their families and towns and villages,
those who where tortured to death,
and those who have tortured,
who have died from hunger,
the abused and the abusers,
the young and the old,
for those who have died alone,
in dark and cold places
with no one to mourn them,
while they are known and loved by you,
for all of these I pray my beloved,
for all are your children,
all are loved.
Only infinite mercy and love can understand,
I don’t for my love is slight and conditional,
my anger deep and desire for revenge present,
even if at times there is one to place it on.
Life forms us,
hate deforms others,
children abused can become monsters,
war begets more war,
our blood has perhaps become a deep river,
almost bottomless in its depth,
for hatred and desire for revenge
is insatiable,
only love can heal,
the balm is forgiveness
that only your grace
can bestow,
and in being forgiven,
in understanding what that means,
with the grace of self-knowledge,
can we forgive as well.
It is all grace.
At what point do we, as people, forgive the unrepentant, Mark? At what point does God forgive the unrepentant?
ReplyDelete~Manfred
(Knightstar from Multiply)
Repentance is a response to grace, so God always forgives, to not seek forgiveness is a choice that perhaps only God knows when that choice is actually made. We are called to forgive 70 time 70 times, I guess we do that because we are called to not judge.....we don't see deep enough, or we may perhaps condemn ourselves when we refuse mercy to others for the very things that we do.
ReplyDeleteIn anycase, it is a struggle to simple love and forgive, enough to keep me from worrying about how God sees us, he is infinite love, so it is beyond my ability to understand. I only know it is way beyound my pay-grade. Howver it is greater, not less that anything I can imagine.
peace
mark
"But they repented not, that their sins be forgiven them, and that the healing may begin."
ReplyDeleteThe Bible is replete with variations on the above theme, paraphrased. It clearly implies that no forgiveness by God takes place, until such a time that there is actual repentance. Are we to forgive the unrepentant, when clearly God does not, up until such time that they become truly repentant?
~Manfred
If you feel you have the ability to know what is in the heart of another, at the depth God does, well yes. Do you? Repentance means conversion, which means a turning away from one thing to another, from one life to another. It is a choice.... the freedom of man and the mystery that implies I don't yet understand, not I may never. I do know that Jesus said we are not to judge, for in doing so we judge ourselves. He talks about the splinter and the log etc.
ReplyDeleteJesus saw deeply into the heart, I am not sure we can, too much other stuff going on inside of us, too many projection,(if modern jargon needs to be used), interpretation and simply not knowing what is in the soul of another.
I tend to think that for me reading the scriptures is about me, the parts about sin and judgment are for my instruction, which I always need. The parts about loving, teaching and encouraging are for me to live out with others. Too many christians seem to delight in sending others to hell (I am not implying this about you by any means) as if people were trash and God can't wait to send them to hell. A look at the cross and the love that shows us proves that false.
Peace
mark
We render judgment about everything, Mark. We judge who we will have as friends. We judge with whom we would have our children associate. We judge with what mate we will spend our lives. If we did not render judgment, it would be to our peril and to the peril of our loved ones.
ReplyDeleteAs we judge, so does the society judge. The society adjudicates people deemed dangerous to itself and not in keeping with the good order to be separated from all others, law-abiding.
This "virtue" of rendering no judgment is no virtue at all. It is a twisted politically-correct virtue, which equates any judgment, any use of reason, in making a determination as to the goodness, rightness, acceptability or success of a person, lifestyle, philosophy, ect., the ultimate cardinal sin. Using the parameters of this sort of reasoning, there is no difference in how we are to perceive an individual, who, for instance, helps an old woman cross the street and another individual who beats an old woman to death. Using the sacred virtue of "non-judgmentalism" or non-discrimination", both individuals should have equal standing on our scale of acceptability.
You seem to be determined, Mark, to leave out half of Jesus statement as to judgment, thus leaving out the context of how he had meant it. The other half of "thou shalt not judge" is, "by what measure you judge, therewith shall you be judged".
What this means is that we are not to use a standard, other than GOD'S standard for righteousness, by which to judge people. If, I were to start looking at people, saying to myself, this person is ugly, or this person is unintelligent, or this person is the wrong race, or this person has an unacceptable handicap, making him less than a person, etc., I would not only be unrighteous in my judgments, I would be setting up unattainable standards for myself and I thus judge myself as falling short of those standards.
THIS is what Jesus meant. He did not mean to throw out all common sense in looking at people through the eyes of God's standards of righteous, which need no interpretation by us to render judgment--they explain themselves.
You may say to yourself, who are we to judge as to what God's standards are, as to what God finds righteous. Once again, I say we all do it, because God's laws, the natural laws, the immutable laws, of the I AM, are written in our hearts. Do all of us always get it right, all the time? No. But to say that there are too many gray areas, that we are not wise enough to know basic righteousness from unrighteousness, is fallacy, and therefore, because we cannot judge a thing perfectly, as opposed to judging an thing well, we should not judge at all. Thus, an ax-murderer should be viewed the same way as we view a saint, just so we can claim the ultimate "righteous virtue" of not judging others, for ourselves.
As far as forgiving the unrepentant, would the father and the father's household have forgiven the prodigal son, and embraced the prodigal son's homecoming, had that same prodigal son come back to the father and insisted he did nothing wrong and arrogantly demanded to be let back into the fold? I think not. Thus should we treat the unrepentant in our own lives.
~Manfred
I don't disagree with what you are saying. Of course we judge. I guess it is on the soul level, were one goes, how one stands in God sight, that we do not judge. Of course people need to be responsible and pay their depth to society, I do judge who I will 'hang' with, but to judge deeper than that, that is dangerous terrority my friend. The point of the prodigal sons return, is that he came back for other motives than forgivness, he came back to be fed and to be a slave, the father forgave him right off, the father waited, it was the son who took off, rejected the father, he could have stayed away and he would have died. People judged Jesus because he did actually hang with sinners, and by doing that probably brought many to repentance.
ReplyDeleteTo treat and to judge are two different things. If someone is a danger to my family, to myself, to society, then yes that person needs to be dealt with, for a relationship is not possible; it is more on their side than mine, judging is not part of the equation, well it is only on the level of relationship. What causes people to do what they do, if they are free etc., is not my place, I don't see deep enough.
I see my own struggles, failures and my starting over to much to put myself in a place of writing others off.
peace
Mark