Seeing a Truthful Reflection
So Peter opened his mouth and said: ‘Truly I understand that God shows no partiality.’ (Acts 10:34)
One of the greatest blessings of the Christian faith is the promise of mercy, grace, and forgiveness. Society cannot offer acceptance. Even in our self-proclaimed tolerance culture, it is easily found unacceptable. Our society pretends to be open-minded, but only on specific terms. More compromising, each public segment has rules for what they will tolerate. Even Christian Churches have written and unwritten rules for who is in and who is out. Yet, God, through Jesus Christ, offers otherworldly care and love.
The judgment of others and divine retribution pale compared to the cruelty of our self-examination. We know our own darkest secrets. Then, we often twist those memories and regrets into a twisted cauldron of self-directed anger, and when that gets too much to handle, it morphs into despair. In “You Are Right on Time Even if You Wasted Years of Your Life-And Here’s Why,” Joseph Dalton attempts to heal our angst and guide us back to a healthy self-reflection. Dalton calls us to “Release the story you have been telling yourself,” by including truthful affirmation. Dalton continues, “Just be with what’s true in you and realize you’ve got this moment. You’re fully resourced for the version of now.”
The mistakes we’ve made hurt our integrity and diminish our self-confidence. Yet, too often, our misjudgments warp our self-reflection. Our guilt does not allow us to perceive that we also have good qualities and goodness within us. What is required, as described by Dalton, is the need to focus on our version of now. Our imperfect reflections twist the past, and the future is influenced by fear or self-aggrandizement. The only genuine and honest moment of reflection is our version of now. Living in and reflecting on the moment with the Holy Spirit allows a true vision of ourselves to be reflected in our minds and hearts.
Only when truth is reflected and internalized can we trust our experience and understanding. Truth begins and ends with God and the Spirit’s guidance. Try as we might, we cannot reflect fact without God’s direction. We dare to see ourselves truthfully through divine support and accept what is good in our actions. A renewed commitment to work on self-improvement while always affirming our innate worthiness is genuine because the hands of God created us. Further, we’ve been called in baptism and blessed in the divine covenant to be worthy, which is not synonymous with perfection. You and I are not perfect, but we are worthy of God’s love.