These words are not just words but heartfelt prayer to God, a statement of affirmation. God does give us the supplies of perfect ideas and thoughts that bring us through our day with grace, love and forgiveness. By turning to God alone for our needs both for direction, ideas, thoughts that come from the All-knowing Mind, God, we gain the true sense of what we’re to do today.
This daily, moment by moment activity of turning to God for all frees us from the burden of belief that we’re out in a world of chaos, fear, anger, and doubt and that we’re ‘to fend for ourselves’. What a lonely fear driven thought that is! But because God is All-in-all we must and can turn to this Love for all things. This turning of thought to God brings to our day peace, reassurance, perfect guidance, protection, and the ‘How to do’ anything in all circumstances. For only God is and can give us peace and direction, love and understanding.
To forgive all wrongs, ill-will, disappointments, angry encounters, hurt feelings, is to free not only our ‘debtors’, those who we feel have done something to us, but it also frees us from the harboring of the poisons of anger, resentment, and hard feelings. These resentments and hurts clog our thoughts, harden our hearts, and make us ‘stiff necked’ people. The attributes of resentment poison our other relationships with doubt and mistrust. They make us come into other relationships not fully engaged. They smolder in our thoughts, making us unpleasant without explanation.
To forgive frees us from the past. To forgive allows us to express grace, joy and love with all without constraint. Forgiveness frees us to be our true childlike self, God’s child, the child of Love. It brings ease and joy back into our relationships and thoughts.
Many times our
Master, Christ Jesus, included the words, “Thy sins be forgiven thee” when he
was healing people. He knew that the only way the sins that create disease and
death may be forgiven is by the complete removal of them. He stated to many, ‘go
and sin no more’. That is the fullness of forgiveness, that the sins be
completely stopped. Those harboring ill-will, a sin against our fellow man, God’s
child, must stop completely the holding of grudges. How? By forgiving others
and letting go of the thoughts that harbor the anger and resentment. This frees
us all and stops the egotism, the sin, the self-superiorities of ill-will.
In the healing in Mark we find his explanation of these words when we read, “Why doth this man thus speak blasphemies? who can forgive sins but God only? And immediately when Jesus perceived in his spirit that they so reasoned within themselves, he said unto them, Why reason ye these things in your hearts? Whether is it easier to say to the sick of the palsy, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and take up thy bed, and walk? But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (he saith to the sick of the palsy,) I say unto thee, Arise, and take up thy bed, and go thy way into thine house.”2
All that Christ Jesus did wasn’t just for his own good but for all to learn and do as well. When we forgive we are freeing not only ourselves but also those who we are harboring ill-will against. This grace of forgiveness heals.
It is the Christ within us, the Good of God’s creating, the perfect Ideal that we all manifest of God’s likeness that gives us the ability and freedom to forgive. This is what Jesus revealed throughout his earthly career. This Christ raised the dead, healed and fed the multitude, and broke all mortal beliefs concerning life and death. This Christ is ours by reflection. We too may heal relationships through this Christ activity of Love.
Mary Baker Eddy states in her main work, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, “Sin is forgiven only as it is destroyed by Christ,—Truth and Life.”3 Truth and Life are the synonyms of God, so sin is forgiven only as it destroyed by the Christ power of God.
How? The statement, “Love thy neighbor as thyself”4 brings a new view of how to see and express love to our fellow man. This activity of Love frees us. It breaks the chains and fetters of hate. Through the reflection of Love, God, our true nature and expression, we are freed from all ill-will. Love brings to our thoughts love. This love, this grace, this joyful acceptance of others as God sees them, precious, whole, complete, good, brings the wonderful ability to forgive our ‘enemies’. Love, then, is the key to forgiveness. Love frees us to love!
Today let us stop the poisons of ill-will. Let us forgive as we would like to be forgiven. Let us free ourselves and others from the holding of grudges even for one more hour. Let us be free through the activity of love and forgiveness.
Gentle hugs
1 The King James Version of the Holy Bible Matthew 6 vss. 12, 13
2 ibid Mark 2 vss. 7-11
3Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy page 5 line 23
4 The King James Version of the Holy Bible Matthew 19 vs. 19
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