Forgiveness, against the tide, amid injustice

It is easy to forgive when it costs nothing.  It is not so easy when someone is coming at you, or when life turns against you for an extended period of time.  When we are tempted to react.

Grace can be a gift in some situations but 
in other circumstances every hurt comes hard.

Forgiveness against the tide inevitably is a learned practice.  It doesn’t come easy.  A forgiving heart that is found after overcoming the initial bitterness that hardens the heart is hard-won wisdom.  Perhaps having found forgiveness easy, we are tested later in life by circumstances we cannot reconcile—at least for a very long time.

If we see life as a learning ground, 
we endure the tough seasons better.

The tougher circumstances of life, once they have been endured, prove instructive for hearts committed to learning.  Curiosity is a character trait to nurture.

DON’T FORGET THE MEANING OF LIFE

The meaning of life is wisdom, it is character solidity, it is purity of heart, and it is safety for others.  It is service to others.  The whole purpose of this life is stepping on the earth in such a way as to bless it and not curse it.

We have impact while we are here.  
We bless.    Or we curse.  
There is no middle ground.

There is no good if we are Christian and we do not bless our world.  What is the point ‘winning souls to Christ’ if our character is rubbish?  If we are charismatic by nature and winsome, we might seduce some for a time, but the duplicity is a curse.  All it does is reveal that our fruit is from a poisonous tree.  Our ‘love’ is not from God.

The meaning of life is transcending 
everything that would produce harm.

~

COUNTERINTUITIVE VICTORY

There is only one way to fight back against an injustice done to us.  That way is to overcome it through forgiveness.  It is counterintuitive.  Counterintuitive victory.

A lot of the time we are infracted it is done by people who prod and poke and goad.  Those who violate us rely on their frustrating us to evoke a reaction where we are seen as graceless, and they tend to get away with it every time.

To overcome temptation to react, 
we must attain humility of heart.

The only way to overcome situations like this is to rise above the temptation to react, because those who would abuse us rely on us reacting.  But it serves us little to just agree to do this.  What is needed is a heart to SERVE.  Why?  Because it is the right thing to do.  And because it serves such practical needs.

The power to NOT react is given to the person 
who has forgiveness deep in their heart.

~

ALWAYS BE PREPARED TO DO MORE – FOR YOUR OWN GOOD

It is always to our benefit as we benefit others, even if in our benefitting others it doesn’t appear we are benefitting ourselves.

The fact is, blessing others through our deeds of kindness and grace, and in this case forgiveness, must become a habit.  It must become our routine.  It must become second nature—if not the behaviour, the commitment to do it again and again.  To keep coming back to it.

And this is the reason why it is so important:

Going above and beyond for others 
is personally empowering.
Going above and beyond 
for others is good for them too.

Blessing and serving others works.
It has a good chance of being appreciated.
But the habit alone nurtures 
forgiveness and a strong heart.

A commitment to service 
inspires others and it motivates us.

Sustained commitments of service create resilience.

In our continual serving of others, we learn that we can do it.  We learn powers of resilience.  We learn to overcome our disappointment in receiving a lack of reciprocation, time and again.  In our committing to serve others as our response to whatever happens, including the injustices that inevitably occur, we insist that we will be forgiving persons.

Forgiveness is the power of God 
operationalised in a humble heart.

Nothing can defeat the person who forgives; 
no injustice, no misfortune, nothing.

Forgiveness, the Blessing of God

The wisdom that is in forgiveness is irrefutable.  Simply, it works.  Always, ultimately.  It IS the evidence of God in this world, and it is something that never fails, provided we play the long game of obedience to the incontrovertible rules of this life.

It is fine if you disagree.  Go for it!  The fact is, in the long run, the person who cultivates the garden of their heart will succeed where the bitter will fall.  It’s just the way it is.

The ancient book of Proverbs (1:20-22) puts it well:
Out in the open wisdom calls aloud,
    she raises her voice in the public square;
on top of the wall she cries out,
    at the city gate she makes her speech.

“How long will you who are simple love your simple ways?
    How long will mockers delight in mockery
    and fools hate knowledge?”

Woman Wisdom sets it out plainly, and a resounding thread in her message is this: don’t deny, dismiss, diss, or besmirch the truth.  Life will only bite back at you.  The simple, the mockers, the fools in life, are all doomed because of the WAY they go; how they think, behave, and act.  How they refuse responsibility.  How they think life serves them.

The opposite way, however, is the way to blessing.  It is the taking of responsibility.  It is learning, and living, and healing, and growing.  It is the life of service.  And it is forgiveness.

PLAYING THE LONG GAME

The long game is the practice of a fundamentally hope-fuelled faith, characterised by a peaceable patience, figuring that it is always better to cop a short-term loss—even if that loss is devastating—in the hope that overall goal can ultimately be gained.

Playing the long game in life can appear that we are losing from a short-term viewpoint.  But over the longer haul, patience and trust underpin the character of our faith.  Not being bothered by the shorter-term wins and losses, we hold the faith and assess over the decades rather than the weeks.

It is the longer haul that 
will ultimately define us.

A focus on short-term outcomes
produces short-term motivation 
and a harmful constricted vision.

The only way of successfully playing 
the long game is through forgiveness.

Forgiveness is faith in the long game.

~

FORGIVENESS IS BLESSING

What we have received we are destined to give.  The gospel reality of having been forgiven by God—because of what Jesus did in dying on the cross and His being resurrected on the third day—is actually the model way of living.  

God gives us life 
when we exemplify sacrificial living 
with a heart compelled to serve as Jesus did.

The cliché is, “blessed to be a blessing.”  
But it is true.  We ARE blessed to be a blessing.

The testimony of this is on our hearts.  When we RECEIVE God’s blessing, all we want to do is give it away.  That is the testimony of the life changing will of God as it interrupts our selfishness and converts us to give away what we cannot otherwise keep.

We are blessed in giving away 
by receiving what we cannot lose.

The blessing in forgiveness 
is an inner joy, a flourishing of hope, 
and the steady inner residence of peace, 
even as we extend this joy, hope, and peace.

Forgiveness is the blessing of God because it is the beauty of God that vouchsafes victory warding off the risk of defeat, even if forgiveness looks like risking defeat.  Out of the clutches of spiritual death we have been ripped, and we are gracefully saved into the arms of God.

This is a gift of God that wins our hearts away 
from the darker forces of spiritual death 
that desperately seek to annihilate our hope.

This is the restorative medium of life where myriad form of division threatens to disrupt peace and destroy hope.  Peace enables peace, hope propagates hope.  Peace and hope must start from somewhere.

INVITATION TO BLESSING THROUGH FORGIVENESS

It is easy to miss this but think of the irony: there is double the opportunity when we have been terribly hurt, inconsolably transgressed, or tragically betrayed.  It is to REDEEM what was taken, and the only way back to a peace that only God can give is to forgive.

It seems counterintuitive 
to redeem what was taken:
the way back to peace is to forgive 
while remembering and honouring
how and why we extended such grace.

Forgiving does not mean forgetting; indeed, we cannot forget.  We forgive at the same time as remembering!  We never forget what was done but we thank and praise God for His power; a power He gives us to overcome anything that would poison the peace He came to give and that which He gives eternally.

We extend grace despite the harms done to us. 
We hold the power of God in our hands 
when we forgive despite those harms done.

If we see that God is genuinely in control of life and of our lives, we can then wonder why He has allowed these things to occur.  We know that, despite Christ’s victory, according to Ephesians 5:15-17, “the days are evil.”  None of us will endure this life unscathed, no matter how committed we are to kindness and blessing others.  Besides, we are given opportunities of redemption from all manner of setbacks, just as the resurrection was redemption from death on a cross.

When we forgive despite what was done to us, we extend a grace which is an invitation to blessing—for everyone we touch, not just the one we forgive.

When we forgive, we exude life.

When we comprehend that our world expands in proportion to our extension of grace, our heart is opened even more in trusting God for more and more blessing.

Forgiveness truly is an act of faith in the promise of God 
to heal what cannot be healed without it.

Forgiveness, the Purpose of Life

“Look at what they make you give.”  It is a famous refrain implicitly woven through the Bourne-trilogy, classically quoted by Clive Owen in The Bourne Identity (2002).  

The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy (2004), and The Bourne Ultimatum (2007) symbolise what occurs in any of our lives when we reach the point of pinnacle performance.  There is a tragic irony in this thread that connects them all.  All the “assets” in the Bourne films give their lives for the cause, and yet the cause seems futile in the end.  The Firm wins.

True to life, the Firm ALWAYS wins.

The Firm MUST win.

That the Firm wins is important
in the proving of our commitment.

You may think, “WHAT?!”

This is WHY such precipices exist...

Do we resent a commitment to the futile, 
or do we move on beyond it to overcome?

So many get stuck in the futility of giving ALL, 
seeing all they have committed to this life as a waste, 
never sensing that they are so close to the answer. 

It is a wicked irony that the answer
—even in the belly of futility—
is literally around the corner.

ALL CHRIST, OR NOTHING!

From a theological viewpoint, as Christians following Christ, so many of us have prayed the prayer, “Lord, I will do anything for You, and give You everything, from now on,” usually in some form of plea bargain, “Lord, get me out of this and I will follow You all the days of my life.”  

We also may have genuinely prayed this sort of sold-out-to-God prayer in the adulation of pure conviction!  All Christ, or nothing!  And we find God sustains us in this spiritual fervour.

We find that God takes us up on our offer. 

God convinces our heart that we are His in this.

And God, as He always does, proves faithful.

~

At some later stage, however, when our fervour has worn off a little, life smashes our hope, we face an irretrievable injustice, we burn out, or some other incomprehensible challenge thwarts us.  We come to doubt the faithfulness of God.

We may come to rue that we ever 
made the offer in the first place.

We arrive at that place that Job did.
We come to feel utterly defeated.

This, nevertheless, is an important step in the process—to comprehensively regret ever having committed so much.  The reason this is so important is that we learn a lot, as Job did, from God revealing our heart—it was a bargaining prayer we prayed.  It is often the penultimate step, however, because inevitably in the learning, humility gets us to a cherished place of absolute sustained surrender, which is ease, because we have learned humility is the only way that works.

Humility is the only undefeatable attitude.

Humility is the only sustainable attitude for life.

Humility is the bedrock of resilience, growth, and healing.

But humility does not come without a massive battle.

~

Ultimately it is in our quest to live at peace 
with life and with everyone that sets us apart to God. 

This is the true life of a Christ follower—
i.e., it is ALL for Him, or nothing!

And yet, it is a journey to arrive 
at this humility of peace; 
it can take a decade or two
of earnest getting-there.

LIFE’S ULTIMATE LESSON IS BEYOND FUTILITY

We must experience futility, and be driven hard into that form of oblivion, before we can transcend ourselves and truly become a truly-sold-out-to-God Jesus-follower.  As life would have it, faith is eventually tested, and we fail a lot before our faith is proven in the fire.  

Futility is a fiery crucible.

The only way to receive an indefatigable purpose 
is to enter it through having endured futility. 

This is what ancient Ecclesiastes validates: 
the life wisdom of Solomon.

Life is at least partial naiveness 
if we have not yet experienced futility. 

Humility is an essential and 
fundamental part of the answer.  

Without entering and thereby learning to accept futility, 
our hopes in these shades of adversity are dashed.

Forgiveness is centrally the behaviour of acceptance 
and is the only viable response in situations of futility.

There is purpose BEYOND the futility in and of this life.  We must experience and thereby endure the futility before we are able to judiciously choose a higher purpose.  That higher purpose, the only higher purpose that makes any sense in the context of futility, can only be an eternal purpose, and we only reach for it BECAUSE of the futility we struggle with. 

Futility, as we come to see it, 
is both the gateway and thoroughfare 
to genuine, faith-proved resilience.

Until we have been to futility—
and THROUGH it—
we will not choose wisely, 
because the ultimate wisdom 
is choosing a godly purpose, 
despite the futility.

A God-follower is a volunteer; 
they are not voluntold.

Futility otherwise drives us to despair, the only true purpose is beyond despair, and yet we must enter the starkness of the most haranguing despair to overcome it.  What sustains us is love, for love never fails (1 Corinthians 13:8).  Many things fail but love never does.

“THE THINGS WE DO FOR LOVE”

There’s so much godly wisdom in a lot of rock ‘n’ roll songs.  All wisdom is OF God.

I think of “The Things We Do for Love” by 10cc, for instance.  I think it speaks about the intrinsic wisdom that there is in compromise, to allow a relationship or an arrangement to succeed, because both parties are willing to negotiate.  And yet there are always times where parties don’t have an equal relationship, for instance, when a business decides to reorganise its structure, and we must accept what is within the rights of the business to do.

“A compromise would surely help the situation
Agree to disagree but disagree to part
When after all it’s just a compromise of
The things we do for love, the things we do for love.”
(Part of 10cc’s lyrics – The Things We Do for Love)

The fact is love is nothing without preparing to lose.  We must be prepared to lose in order, that we might stay in the game, and because all of us have skin in the game, so to speak, it represents the vast portion of wisdom to simply hang in there. 

Love has a broader vision 
than simply getting its own way.

Love thereby accepts and accommodates loss, and is therefore unfaltering, because love never ultimately gives up.  Love does not so much count the cost, and it is indeed the opposite.  Love gives up what cannot be kept, to gain what cannot be lost—yes, love, that is borne on a healed heart.

Love endures even in loss.
Love endures in faith and in hope.
Love is therefore a choice of courage.

This is understanding that love requires us to give all even as we risk all.  True love subsists in risking everything for righteousness, simply because it is the right thing to do, which is to give and to keep on giving—in faith, for love, in the exemplification of hope.

We find in this that love and forgiveness 
are intrinsically linked.

Judge for yourself and see:
love and forgiveness are inherent 
in the way life works. 

FORGIVENESS AS AN ANTHEM OF LIFE’S PURPOSE

Until we can see these truths emerge in our own lives, we cannot fathom that what seems like comprehensive defeat is actually the cusp of victory.

Forgiveness looks like defeat to the perishing.  It is always 10 or 15 steps (or even one) too far.  They never sense that forgiveness is a journey of faith that takes them BEYOND defeat. 

Indeed, as the purpose of life, forgiveness is the ONLY way to victory—victory over self and for others, and centrally, victory for God, in the name of God, for we have placed Him above ourselves. Forgiveness IS love.

Forgiveness is a gift we give to ourselves, 
and to others, and not least God, 
for our future, for our hope, 
for the life abundant between now and eternity.

Forgiveness gives us back the future.
But bitterness ransoms the future.
Forgiveness is what we ‘give’ to our future.

I hope I have demonstrated in this article, the importance of reaching a place of utter futility, because it is a place we must reach, in coming to the end of ourselves, in order that we must start at the beginning, again, with God.

Much of the time, bitterness and resentment about the injustices that have gone against us must be reconciled as futility before we can move on, accepting what we cannot change, and in that we find the Holy Grail of the Meaning of Life.

We, ourselves, though we would like it to be, 
are NOT the Centre of the Universe.  God is.

Indeed, the quest for maturity stands upon the precipice: can we let go of every desire of self?  Is there something more fundamentally and eternally important?  Can we not prefer to give up our claims to ourselves in preference for taking up claims for God?

Only when we have done this do we genuinely understand how and why James chapter one says, “Consider it pure joy, brothers and sisters, when you face trials of many kinds.”  Such turns of phrase are otherwise perplexing and seem not to apply to us.

Forgiveness is the anthem of life’s purpose.

What seems utterly ridiculous to the perishing is absolutely life in all its abundance to those who understand the wisdom woven into and through every vestige of life itself through forgiveness.

Forgiveness is the purpose of God in life,
to arrive at acceptance 
for that which we cannot change.
That, there, is God’s wisdom and peace.

God’s ultimate goal for each of us is 
our experiencing His peace in forgiveness.

The more God’s grace flows into and through 
our lives, the more we live His purpose.

~

How do we maintain our mental, 
emotional, and spiritual health?
A lot of the time, the answer is forgiveness.

POSTSCRIPT: many conspiracy theories abound in this life.  To nurture such thought when our perception is so impressionable is self-defeating.  It leads only to suspicion and an attitude of intrinsic bitterness.  This article has set out the better way.  Forgiveness is the purpose of life and of God in each our lives.

Forgiveness, the Healing of God

Forgiveness is the vehicle to enable the design of life, which is healing unto wholeness.  If it were not the case, it would not be written on the hearts of our lives.  Bitterness and resentment take us into many manifestations of hell, but forgiveness leads to healing, wholeness, peace.

Forgiveness beyond screaming for justice amid 
injustice because Faith says, “God sees ALL.”

The trouble is, often for such healing to take place, we must borrow a hope we do not have, and this is hard when we are spiritually weak.  When life has been unfair, it’s hard to take the road less travelled, but it is essential if we are to take that right path—that path that leads to life.

Sometimes it is only one person’s shabby treatment of us that takes us down the slippery slope to a despair that jettisons hope and sabotages any vestige of faith we had.  This is a reality; a temptation we all face, and an experience we have all probably dabbled in.

Why is it that one person or one situation 
has so much power over us?  We are not alone.

The simplistic answer is we “gave” the person or the situation too much power, but it is not as simple as that a lot of the time.  There are situations that should be trustworthy that prove not to be, or people who should be trustworthy and yet who default on that trust.

Whichever way it is, it is not good when we find ourselves in a situation where we need healing.  But that is life.  Add to this, it is not good if we find ourselves locked into bitterness, grief, resentment, and the like.  But that too is life.  Yet healing is an opportunity.

There is a time for bitterness and resentment, 
but it is not good to stay there.

Healing is the opportunity for growth.

We don’t live in a perfect world, yet by default so many of us sorely desire it, and so many of us truly need it, yet alas, that is what the world isn’t.  The world and the situations of our lives can plunge us into an abyss beyond reckoning.

How are we to reconcile that which breaks us?

How are we to be put back together?

These are questions for all people who find themselves at a loss for what life does to them.  For how the situations of life prove heartrending.  For how some of the people in our lives leave us undone and without recourse to recovery.  For how loss rips hope from our clutches and leaves us in the pit of grief’s sullen despair.

How do we heal these massive impasses 
to achieve the cherished peace we desire?

I think from my own personal experience it is all about motivation.  If peace as its own reward is sought it will be found.  It will be searched for.  It will be worth the sacrifices we need to make to obtain it.

Forgiveness is at the heart of peace because 
forgiveness itself is at the heart of healing.

Forgiveness is a wisdom of God because it agrees with the reality that says, “Not all things are within my own personal control, and I need to be okay with that.”  Looked at from the opposite direction, to not forgive, to not accept what cannot be changed, is to face-off with the madness of attempting to deny and defy the inevitable.  It leads only to maladaptive responses and exhaustion.  It makes no sense from a common-sense standpoint.  It leads only to harm.

GOD WILL HEAL US IF ONLY WE WILL LET HIM

There is a way of seeing life that leads to life.

Another way of saying this is, 
entering forgiveness facilitates the abundant life.

The abundant life, as the phrase suggests,
is the life we should all want.
It is the life we can all have.

In many ways we are instruments of our own frustration when it comes to our responses to the things that occur to us in our lives.  The wisest response is to play what many are calling “the long game,” which is not coined from the sport of golf, though golf has a long game aspect about it.

The long game in spiritual terms is taking a whole-of-life view of life and allowing that perspective to guide a person every moment.  With such perspective a person does not act the way that the moment often dictates—to react emotionally, for instance, as we are given to do on occasion.

The long game leads us to make sacrifices for the good, as investments of faith, in a future not yet written or realised.  When we employ the long game, we practice a wisdom that looks distinctly like faith, and when such sacrifice becomes a habit, we find we and others are abundantly better for it.  We find we can give up a lot of things that would otherwise be cheap relics, in preference for the spiritual rewards we will one day receive in great wealth.  

Such spiritual blessings are worth the wait.

What the long game provides us is a way of life where we are finally willing to give up what we could have in the hope of getting something significantly better.  Faith is involved because there are no guarantees.  And even as we give up what we cannot keep to gain what we cannot lose, blessings of spiritual wellbeing are heaped onto us amid the process.

When we are onboard with forgiveness it is all upside.

PERSONAL BLESSEDNESS WITHIN FORGIVENESS

It is not just joy that is an inside job.  What produces that joy?  It is peace.  Peace always comes when things are right.  Make a study of peace in the Bible and you soon see that peace is linked with righteousness.  Do what is right and peace comes.

To forgive is not only wise, but also right.

As the Gospel enshrined in forgiveness 
sets right what was out of balance, 
so we also get back into balance 
when we adopt the Gospel heart of forgiveness.

This personal blessedness that is experienced within the process of forgiveness is its own reward.  It is, of itself, a captivating wisdom.  It is an incontrovertible wisdom, meaning it is destined for blessing.

Once we have tasted this and seen it in 
full flight in our lives, we never turn back. 

Once the eyes have been opened, 
they cannot unsee the light.

Billions have asked, 
“What is the meaning of life?”
This is the answer to that question, 
and it is a Gospel reality.

THE HEART SEEKS RECONCILIATION

We all need peace.  It is interwoven in the secret fissures of life.  It is written on each of our hearts, but the further we get from it, the more justified it seems to thumb our nose at it.  But to run the other way from peace delivers only torment.

Test this.  Is it not true that our heart seeks healing, that it seeks peace, that it seeks reconciliation?  It is good that our hearts seek shalom.  Our hearts seek connection, healing, wholeness.

The way to this connection, 
healing and wholeness is forgiveness.

Nothing else will deliver to us 
what we are looking for and need.

Forgiveness is the healing 
of God we all need.
To receive His forgiveness 
and to engage in His forgiveness.

Spiritual direction, Christ in the perception

Truest religion, authentic faith, is a lived possession of the transcendent, to “know” God.  Anything else is merely shadow, pretence, hypocrisy, and it takes us worse than nowhere.

As Christians, we must continually challenge 
ourselves to experience Christ in our midst.

As persons of faith in Christ, we must attain the presence of the Lord that transforms our lives.  It is God’s work of transformation in us, as individuals, that is our most powerful testimony of God’s work.

How this power works most cogently 
is through how we love our neighbour.

This is not about friendships or love relationships, but these are included.  The outworking of loving our neighbour is how we treat those we do not know—THAT is the most powerful witness of the Christ IN us.  That, and then proving utterly trustworthy to our service of the other person—kindness, graciousness, love.

Central to this, of course, is losing our covetousness to idolatry, for we all have desires, both conscious and unconscious, that trap us in bondages to sin.  The only way we can love absolute strangers is if we have absolutely nothing holding us.

So just to be clear, how we receive the transcendent Christ is through our loving our neighbours in such a way as to compel them to see God at work in us.  The only way people see God at work in us is if we genuinely live the death of Jesus so they would see His life in us, and hence would have His life (the 2 Corinthians 4:10 principle).

We must cause people to ask, 
“Why does this person so selflessly give to me?” 
all the while receiving the blessing of God 
as He touches people through us.

The more we do not know people, the better the secret Christ encounters them, because motives are a mystery.  The more we can get beyond rationalisation for manipulation, the more authentically altruistic our attitudes, behaviours, and actions can be, the better.

Act in love with no strings attached 
— simply to bless, nothing else — 
and see what God does with it!

A WASTE OF OUR LIVES

We waste our faith lives living in the carnality of worldly living, insisting on justice, bargaining over what we get and don’t get, condemning ourselves to trajectories of bondage, when God wants to give us life in all its possible abundance.

God will give us the Kingdom, but we 
need to put Him first, or it’s a moot point.

When a person has experienced the fuller faith life in all its abundance, they do not turn back to pettiness that much of humanity is given to.  But we cannot go to these places without giving up the shards of the former life that feel safe and comfortable and even necessary to keep.

It is a waste of the new life in us to keep 
going back to the old ways that never worked.

If they only ever delivered misery and pain, how can they take us to the life that Jesus promises to give us?  If they only ever delivered a self-justification that made for no change, can we not see the hopelessness of such desires?  If those old default ways only ever delivered the same pretence of madness, why would we deceive ourselves anymore?

To go past the wasteland that can all too easily become our lives, we must be prepared to leave what leads only to death, to receive the life that God desperately desires to give us.

MASTERING JESUS IN THE PERCEPTION

It should be our greatest prayer to experience Jesus IN us—to feel God working through us.  Why would we otherwise be satisfied with any other form of living when we can transact in what is inherently transformational?

Mastering Jesus in the perception 
is living gallantly by faith. 

It is giving up what we cannot keep
to gain what we cannot lose.

And it does mean we will need 
to give up what promises much 
but delivers nothing of real worth.

Faith is the matter of Jesus in the perception.
It is seeing ‘riches’ in this life 
and turning the other way.

The spiritual life gives up the matters in the material life for something that the material life cannot give.  The spiritual life prefers to give away the hankerings of the material life, and therefore a person on such a quest is spiritually blessed by being free of the holds that the material life entraps people to.

The spiritual life is intrinsically blessed in every offering 
of graciousness, kindness, patience, and generosity. 

Indeed, the spiritual life IS the epitome of generosity.

The spiritual life 
— against the material life — 
is the way to Christ in the perception.