It seems everyone knows someone like this, or at least has heard of someone fitting this description:
The long-suffering mother or father, with a child who is a delinquent or an unrepentant criminal. No matter how bad things get with their child, the parent still loves them as though they had never done a thing wrong in their life. They are quick to defend the sad soul, and quick to come to their aid, even if they have been wronged or taken advantage of by them. Not only do people hurl insults and abuse at the wayward adult-child, but the parent is called naive or stupid, a pushover or a doormat.
This parent seems only to remember their child as they once were: innocent and full of love for them in a time before everything went wrong. The child, though an adult, is still their baby. Thus they are willing to love them through thick and thin, good and bad, through kindness and abuse.
This is, simply put, how God sees us. He always sees us as His children and is always willing to forgive us, even though we say and do horrible things against His love. We are like the prodigal son, and He is the mercifully loving father awaiting our return home, no explanation needed.
Nikolai Velomirovic counsels us “The Lord is mighty and willing. No one, except Him, is able to cleanse the sinful soul of man from sin and, by cleansing, to whiten it. No matter how often linen is washed in water with ashes and soap, no matter how often it is washed and re-washed, it cannot receive whiteness until it is spread under the light of the sun. Thus, our soul cannot become white, no matter how often we cleanse it by our own effort and labor even with the help of all legal means of the law until we, at last, bring it beneath the feet of God, spread out and opened wide so that the light of God illumines it and whitens it.”
So let us leave off all of our attempts to heal ourselves when the only real healing and the only true cleansing comes from the Lord, who loves us though we definitely do not deserve it.
Amen.
Yorumlar