A process for coming to acceptance

The meaning of life. What could it be? Many will tell you it’s Christ Jesus, crucified and risen from the dead. I would proclaim that message. But there is another very pragmatic way of answering the question, that speaks of Christ in a completely different light; a fundamentally forgiving light.

The Light of the World came to shine his way as the beacon for our feet, to herald the path, to announce The Way. That way is the forgiveness of the Father, procured through the Son, empowered by the Holy Spirit.

The rubber of forgiveness hits the road in acceptance.

What of this acceptance as it relates to forgiveness? The Father accepted the sins of us who rejected him, and the Son accepted the scourge of humanity’s punishment, and the Holy Spirit saw fit to be attached to us, for the purposes of forgiveness, through the bond of faith.

Acceptance is the capability of forgiveness as it applies to every facet of life that we do not like and may even come to despise. To be able to accept the perils of life, the betrayal of trust, the losses that send us to the abyss… these are not easy.

We need a process.

First, we need to accept that our lives, whilst they appear to be ours, are not ours at all. By recognition of the nature of this life—that we don’t have the control over it that we’d like to have—we are invited to accept a fact that cannot be changed. So we cannot control our own lives, and we certainly have even less control over others lives, particularly as they impact on our own lives. And if that isn’t enough to convince us, then there is the fact of the imminence of our deaths.

So, acceptance—the need of it—is academic and can be believed on face value.

Second, on top of knowing the need of it, the benefit of it, we start to imagine how we will work it out. We must somehow learn the application of it.

Quite frankly, if we don’t apply it we cavort with madness, and anyone thinking that’s a clever alternative for living life would be best not to advise others.

The process for coming to acceptance is simply the basic acceptance of the need to do it, mixed with the actual doing of the practice of it. The more we practice what might seem impossible to begin with, the more we find what seems ludicrous is actually not only possible but the only rational way. But we must practice it to see it.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash