Salvation and Waking Up to Who We Really Are

I posted a version of this to Facebook the other day and am sharing it here to flesh it out a bit more. Here you go …

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In her book “A Return to Love”, Marianne Williamson says that, “Nothing that you have ever done or will ever do can mar your perfection in the eyes of God.”

Do you believe that?

Do you think it’s possible?

… I do.

We are created in the image of the Divine, I believe - created in the image of God, the God who (the Scriptures insist) "is love".

”God is love”, said the writer of 1 John.

We are “made in God's image”, said the writer(s) of Genesis.

And so (I think) it follows that we too are love - we are an extension of God.

Neale Donald Walsch imagines God as a hand and us as fingers on the hand - the hand is a hand and the fingers are fingers and yet it’s all one in the same. I mean, can a hand exist without fingers? Can fingers exist without a hand? Can we exist apart from God? Can God exist apart from us?

Phew.

I don’t know. The point, though, I THINK (?) is that we are one with God and one with one another - just as a hand can’t really exist without fingers and fingers without a hand so we can’t exist without God and God can’t exist without us.

And so maybe.

Just maybe.

That’s why Jesus once said concerning his followers (in John 17) that he had “given them the glory that you (God) gave me, that they may be one as we are one - I in them and you in me - so that they may be brought to complete unity.”

Jesus and God, the hand. We the fingers, the hand. God in Jesus. Jesus in us. All of us are one, we are the hand … and we don’t really exist without each other. God is Divine. Jesus is Divine because God is in Jesus. We, too, (then) must be Divine because Christ is in us.

… “Complete unity.”

And (again - circling back) since God is love and we are made in God’s image and we are all the hand … we are love - love is what we are at our deepest core.

The problem is that we do some stupid stuff, though … don't we? We aren't always very loving. We say stupid stuff, do stupid stuff, think stupid stuff. We are constantly forgetting who are, whose image we are made in, who we have been created to be.

We wound with our words.

We wound with our actions.

We wound with our wars.

But, still, even so ... buried deep down inside (and often times covered in an immense amount of baggage that we pick up from the various traumas we endure and inflict) is a still, small, tiny flame that will never go out - the image of God that burns within us.

This is who we are.

This is our truest self.

This is the goodness that oozes out of us at birth.

This is our perfection - perfection that we lose sight of, but that never escapes the eye of God.

This is the essence that we forget as we grow and become accustomed to the ways of the world in which we live where there is competition and hatred and violence and war and struggle and all sorts of things.

And so salvation, I think, is waking up - it's waking up and beginning to remember who we really are, whose image we are made in, and what we're put on this earth to be ... who we are put on this earth to reflect.

For me? The stories of Jesus wake me up to that, they help me to remember. I forget who I am daily, hourly and so every day and sometimes every hour I find myself needing to reflect back on those ancient stories to look into the mirror of Jesus so that I can see myself reflected back at me and remember ...

"Ahhh, yes. I am a person of grace, of love, of forgiveness. I am a giver of hope, of joy. I am an agent of change. I am here to stir things up, to shake things down, to be a friend to the friendless, a healer of the hurting, a presence to those who are grieving. I am just like Jesus."

... the stories help me to remember those things, they help me to wake up, they help me to see past the baggage that covers the tiny flame inside, they help me to want to do better next time - they help save me again and again and again.

What I wanted to tell you is that nothing you do can mar the perfection in you, my friend. It will always be there - no matter how buried it becomes by your baggage. May we all collectively wake up to the loving, perfect flame within us and put an end to the evils of our world.

Acting as one, single loving force? We can make that happen.

Acting as competing individuals? Well, we've see how that works.

- Glenn || SUPPORT THE PROJECT