Tell Me Again

 (this the fourth in a series of Lenten Meditations on forgiveness — for background, resources, and an approach to using these meditations, please check the About the Meditations page)

Prayer
Patient, compassionate God, open to me the heart of forgiveness. Fire in me the courage to see honestly my true needs and those of others. Inspire in me creative responses that claim and champion our shared humanity. Give me grace to forgive and to accept forgiveness.
 
Meditation
Tell me again: Tell me again, help me to hear: I am loved. I am forgiven. God loves me just as I am. God’s love frees and strengthens me to love and forgive.

The business of forgiveness—giving and receiving forgiveness, to and for ourselves and others—calls for strength. Where does that strength come from? Well, training and practice of course, just like weight training builds our physical strength. But I think what we are training is not so much our own “spiritual muscle” but rather our openness to a strength beyond our own. It is the strength of God’s love for  us that gives us strength for the work of forgiveness.

I know this can sound abstract and disconnected from our real lives. And if I told you it is an experience you have to have it could sound a bit woo-woo. In fact, God’s love is the most concrete and practical reality of our lives every day. It’s there in every breath we take, in the faces of family, friend, and stranger, in every free choice we make hoping for the best. How we recognize this reality in all these things is a matter of grace and a mystery. And even so, it’s something we can practice.
 
Call to Mind your breath; right now just notice the next four or five breaths before you go on.
Imagine all the people who have breathed this same air, and all the people who will: some molecules of each breath shared with the people around you and also with those far away in time and space. You breathe with your parents and grandparents, with grandchildren and great-nieces yet unborn, with most intimate love, with strangers, with enemies. We are all connected. This is God’s gift, God’s love in action. Perhaps when we forgive others we are always also forgiving a part of ourselves.
 
Check-in with your feelings. Are you relaxed, or clenched up? What thoughts arise? Are you able to keep, or reestablish touch with your peaceful, beloved center?
 
Gratitude, Hopes, Prayers: Reflect a moment, maybe even write down: what are you grateful for, right now? what hopes rise up in you? do you have a prayer you would offer to God?
 
Psalm 126
A Song of Ascents.
1 When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion,
we were like those who dream.
2 Then our mouth was filled with laughter,
and our tongue with shouts of joy;
then it was said among the nations,
‘The Lord has done great things for them.’
3 The Lord has done great things for us,
and we rejoiced.
4 Restore our fortunes, O Lord,
like the watercourses in the Negeb.
5 May those who sow in tears
reap with shouts of joy.
6 Those who go out weeping,
bearing the seed for sowing,
shall come home with shouts of joy,
carrying their sheaves.
 
Benediction Prayer
May I know, again and again and always, that God loves me. May I grow in trust in God’s peace that passes all understanding. May God open me to recognize and trust in God’s powerful love. Amen.