"Give us this day our daily bread."
Give us grace for today; feed the famished affections.
Give us this day our daily Love, our daily experience of Love, our daily communion with Love.
Give us the grace that is Love-in-action, that feeds not only our famished affections, but impells us to reflect the Love-that-is-God by feeding the famished affections of those around us. Or rather, that we may awaken to see and appreciate the Love that is always already present within everyone we meet!
And so forgive us our lack of seeing Love, of living Love, of giving Love, of being Love. Forgive us our lack of Grace - the unconditional Love that God shines out non-stop "on the evil and the good."
The Adorable One is only reflected in us consciously to the extent that we are being adorable! Love always demands that we live our love out loud. No sticking it under a bushel!
Eat this Bread of Life by being loving.
So give us this moment - let us receive even just for this moment - all the Love that God is giving us, all the Love that is shining in us, as us, through us, to us. Let us receive it all - and reflect it all - right now.
Showing posts with label Grace. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Grace. Show all posts
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Considering Grace and Forgiveness
"Give us this day our daily bread."
Give us grace for today; feed the famished affections.
"And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors."
And Love is reflected in love.
Grace and forgiveness are beautiful concepts to consider.
Forgiveness seems fairly straight-forward. But have you thought of forgiveness as absolution? as acquittal? as allowance, amnesty, benevolence, clemency, compassion, condolence, destigmatization, dismissal, exculpation, excuse, exoneration, favor, feeling, forbearance, forgetfulness, heedlessness, humanity, kindness, leniency, mercy, mitigation, pardon, pity, purgation, relief, remission, reprieve, sympathy, tolerance, vindication, and yes, even grace?
And dictionaries give the word grace at least 9 different shades of meaning: There is the aspect of grace that includes kindness and good will. The aspect that means effortless fluidity and power of movement. And that which shines with inherent beauty. But the most important is the aspect of grace is that one which relates to God: the grace of unconditional love.
And it's this concept of grace, this unearned unconditional love, that both sustains and forgives.
Consider Jesus' words:
"But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust."
This is not an invitation to be a doormat. No. Just the opposite. Nor is it an invitation to think you're better - or worse - than anyone else. No. It is an invitation to understand something surprisingly much more important:
Unconditional Love is an irresistable everpresent power.
And it's yours to live. And it's yours to give.
God pours out this sunshine and rain - this power - His Love - to everyone (including you) unconditionally.
You don't earn it. You don't have to obey some bunch of human rules or bribe some hierarchy or bow down to some organization or win some special merit or favoritism. No. There is no earning of God's Love. God's love is always unconditional. And it's powerful. It has the power to sustain. It has the power to heal. It has the power to forgive. And it is a power that Love gives you.
This is humbling. You are being given this gift without conditions. You are being given it not because you are better than anyone else. Nor because you are worse than anyone else. You are not more deserving or less deserving. You are not more able or less able. The Love of God is a gift. To you. Right here and right now. Yield to it. Accept it. It really is yours for the living. It really is yours for the giving.
Jesus said, "A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another."
Imagine: you should love others as God loves - unconditionally. His love sees no evil versus good, no just versus unjust, no enemy versus friend. Neither should you. He sees only His perfect creation. So can you.
As it says in Genesis:
"And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good."
Such are the eyes of Love with which God looks out upon His creation. Such are the eyes of Love with which God sees you. Such are the eyes with which God asks you to see your neighbor.
God's beautiful grace, His warmth and light are shining on you, through you, as you, right this moment. His refreshing rain is awakening you to see cleanly and clearly all that you - and everyone - are as His likeness. You are already Love's loving-in-action. This is your real state of being. Here and now. Accept it. Feel it. Act on it. Rejoice in it! There is grace to be lived and famished affections to be fed! Get busy!
Give us this day our daily gracefulness.
Give us unconditional Love today; feed ours and everyone's famished affections.
And forgive us our debts as we forgive those who we think are in debt to us.
And Love is always reflected in love.
Give us grace for today; feed the famished affections.
"And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors."
And Love is reflected in love.
Grace and forgiveness are beautiful concepts to consider.
Forgiveness seems fairly straight-forward. But have you thought of forgiveness as absolution? as acquittal? as allowance, amnesty, benevolence, clemency, compassion, condolence, destigmatization, dismissal, exculpation, excuse, exoneration, favor, feeling, forbearance, forgetfulness, heedlessness, humanity, kindness, leniency, mercy, mitigation, pardon, pity, purgation, relief, remission, reprieve, sympathy, tolerance, vindication, and yes, even grace?
And dictionaries give the word grace at least 9 different shades of meaning: There is the aspect of grace that includes kindness and good will. The aspect that means effortless fluidity and power of movement. And that which shines with inherent beauty. But the most important is the aspect of grace is that one which relates to God: the grace of unconditional love.
And it's this concept of grace, this unearned unconditional love, that both sustains and forgives.
Consider Jesus' words:
"But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust."
This is not an invitation to be a doormat. No. Just the opposite. Nor is it an invitation to think you're better - or worse - than anyone else. No. It is an invitation to understand something surprisingly much more important:
Unconditional Love is an irresistable everpresent power.
And it's yours to live. And it's yours to give.
God pours out this sunshine and rain - this power - His Love - to everyone (including you) unconditionally.
You don't earn it. You don't have to obey some bunch of human rules or bribe some hierarchy or bow down to some organization or win some special merit or favoritism. No. There is no earning of God's Love. God's love is always unconditional. And it's powerful. It has the power to sustain. It has the power to heal. It has the power to forgive. And it is a power that Love gives you.
This is humbling. You are being given this gift without conditions. You are being given it not because you are better than anyone else. Nor because you are worse than anyone else. You are not more deserving or less deserving. You are not more able or less able. The Love of God is a gift. To you. Right here and right now. Yield to it. Accept it. It really is yours for the living. It really is yours for the giving.
Jesus said, "A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another."
Imagine: you should love others as God loves - unconditionally. His love sees no evil versus good, no just versus unjust, no enemy versus friend. Neither should you. He sees only His perfect creation. So can you.
As it says in Genesis:
"And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good."
Such are the eyes of Love with which God looks out upon His creation. Such are the eyes of Love with which God sees you. Such are the eyes with which God asks you to see your neighbor.
God's beautiful grace, His warmth and light are shining on you, through you, as you, right this moment. His refreshing rain is awakening you to see cleanly and clearly all that you - and everyone - are as His likeness. You are already Love's loving-in-action. This is your real state of being. Here and now. Accept it. Feel it. Act on it. Rejoice in it! There is grace to be lived and famished affections to be fed! Get busy!
Give us this day our daily gracefulness.
Give us unconditional Love today; feed ours and everyone's famished affections.
And forgive us our debts as we forgive those who we think are in debt to us.
And Love is always reflected in love.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Give us this day our daily Communion
"Give us this day our daily bread."
Give us grace for today; feed the famished affections.
At even ye shall eat flesh, and in the morning ye shall be filled with bread; and ye shall know that I am the LORD your God.
And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.
In this simplicity, and with such fidelity, we see Jesus ministering to the spiritual needs of all who placed themselves under his care, always leading them into the divine order, under the sway of his own perfect understanding.... To the students whom he had chosen, his immortal teaching was the bread of Life.
Give us this day our daily bread, our daily communion with God, our daily companioning with God.
But to accept this bread, this communion, this companioning, you have to come home to God, enter the house - the consciousness - of God. How? The Bible says "Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name.
So this is how you enter the house of God: through gratitude. And what is true gratitude if not the conscious acknowledgement of the true nature of God as omnipresent Good? How do you know that God is Good? Because God gives us the gift of grace - "he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust." You don't earn God's love. God is just Good, universal Good, unconditional Good. You don't have to beg for the bread at His table. It is His 24/7 gift.
Recognizing this opens your thought to actually accepting His gift, to accepting what God really is, what His nature really is: all-harmonious, infinite good, divine Love. This is "Hallowed be Thy name" kind of thinking. This is adoring the Adorable One. And adoring is effortlessly lovingly hanging on every Word of God, is acknowledging Him, is entering into His courts with thanksgiving.
And what do you find there?
Your Father-Mother God's table set, your daily bread - specific to your daily needs - set for you. This is God's gift of "grace for today" feeding your famished affections - and calling on you to feed the famished affections of your neighbor. And maybe even the world.
You can always sit down with God. You don't have to earn it. You don't have to dress a certain way or say certain things or even believe certain things. And you certainly don't have to be "perfect". You just have to be willing.
Come to God as the disciples did to Jesus, after his resurrection, at their morning meal beside the Sea of Galilee.
There, they left their fishing nets, came ashore, broke bread and communed together with their risen Master. What an astonishing experience it was for them (see John's gospel and Science and Health). His ascending thought raised them out of grief and disbelief, forgave their fears and failures, awakened them to their true purpose, and so fed their real hunger - not just with bread and fish, but with the overflowing awakening here and now that God is Love.
This communion was also their companioning with Christ, with that True Bread which comes down from Heaven. So this too is how you commune with God: by leaving your nets - your tangled obligations, thinking you always have to fend for yourself, letting go of your burdensome duties, all those things that nag you and snag you and drag you into ways of the world. Christ calls you to leave all that. Christ calls you to sit in humble grateful adoration, letting divine Life and Love feed you, forgive you, lead you, deliver you.
In fact, Christ is calling you right now to give up your daily distractions for your daily Bread.
So sit still a moment. Open your thought up with gratitude. Let yourself enter that sacred space in your heart where God is. Let Him give you your daily bread, your daily grace, your daily communion, your daily companioning - your daily oneness with divine Love. Let "this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:"
As you do, you will wake up to see that divine Love is always with you. You have never been empty, never been famished, never been alone, never separated from God - but always only ever at one with Him, your perfect Mind, always welcomed and seated at His table, communing, companioning with "Our Father which art in heaven" - with our Father-Mother God, all-harmonious, forever.
So yes Father, give us this day our daily bread, our daily communion, our daily companioning with You. Give us that beautiful gift of Love's saving grace for today. Let it feed our famished affections, and help us share Your Love to feed the famished affections of those around us.
Obeying his precious precepts,--following his demonstration so far as we apprehend it,--we drink of his cup, partake of his bread, are baptized with his purity; and at last we shall rest, sit down with him, in a full understanding of the divine Principle which triumphs over death.
My Father giveth you the true bread from heaven.
Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift.
Give us grace for today; feed the famished affections.
At even ye shall eat flesh, and in the morning ye shall be filled with bread; and ye shall know that I am the LORD your God.
And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.
In this simplicity, and with such fidelity, we see Jesus ministering to the spiritual needs of all who placed themselves under his care, always leading them into the divine order, under the sway of his own perfect understanding.... To the students whom he had chosen, his immortal teaching was the bread of Life.
Give us this day our daily bread, our daily communion with God, our daily companioning with God.
But to accept this bread, this communion, this companioning, you have to come home to God, enter the house - the consciousness - of God. How? The Bible says "Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name.
So this is how you enter the house of God: through gratitude. And what is true gratitude if not the conscious acknowledgement of the true nature of God as omnipresent Good? How do you know that God is Good? Because God gives us the gift of grace - "he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust." You don't earn God's love. God is just Good, universal Good, unconditional Good. You don't have to beg for the bread at His table. It is His 24/7 gift.
Recognizing this opens your thought to actually accepting His gift, to accepting what God really is, what His nature really is: all-harmonious, infinite good, divine Love. This is "Hallowed be Thy name" kind of thinking. This is adoring the Adorable One. And adoring is effortlessly lovingly hanging on every Word of God, is acknowledging Him, is entering into His courts with thanksgiving.
And what do you find there?
Your Father-Mother God's table set, your daily bread - specific to your daily needs - set for you. This is God's gift of "grace for today" feeding your famished affections - and calling on you to feed the famished affections of your neighbor. And maybe even the world.
You can always sit down with God. You don't have to earn it. You don't have to dress a certain way or say certain things or even believe certain things. And you certainly don't have to be "perfect". You just have to be willing.
Come to God as the disciples did to Jesus, after his resurrection, at their morning meal beside the Sea of Galilee.
There, they left their fishing nets, came ashore, broke bread and communed together with their risen Master. What an astonishing experience it was for them (see John's gospel and Science and Health). His ascending thought raised them out of grief and disbelief, forgave their fears and failures, awakened them to their true purpose, and so fed their real hunger - not just with bread and fish, but with the overflowing awakening here and now that God is Love.
This communion was also their companioning with Christ, with that True Bread which comes down from Heaven. So this too is how you commune with God: by leaving your nets - your tangled obligations, thinking you always have to fend for yourself, letting go of your burdensome duties, all those things that nag you and snag you and drag you into ways of the world. Christ calls you to leave all that. Christ calls you to sit in humble grateful adoration, letting divine Life and Love feed you, forgive you, lead you, deliver you.
In fact, Christ is calling you right now to give up your daily distractions for your daily Bread.
So sit still a moment. Open your thought up with gratitude. Let yourself enter that sacred space in your heart where God is. Let Him give you your daily bread, your daily grace, your daily communion, your daily companioning - your daily oneness with divine Love. Let "this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:"
As you do, you will wake up to see that divine Love is always with you. You have never been empty, never been famished, never been alone, never separated from God - but always only ever at one with Him, your perfect Mind, always welcomed and seated at His table, communing, companioning with "Our Father which art in heaven" - with our Father-Mother God, all-harmonious, forever.
So yes Father, give us this day our daily bread, our daily communion, our daily companioning with You. Give us that beautiful gift of Love's saving grace for today. Let it feed our famished affections, and help us share Your Love to feed the famished affections of those around us.
Obeying his precious precepts,--following his demonstration so far as we apprehend it,--we drink of his cup, partake of his bread, are baptized with his purity; and at last we shall rest, sit down with him, in a full understanding of the divine Principle which triumphs over death.
My Father giveth you the true bread from heaven.
Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift.
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