The way we see the world matters...

Noel-the-Delightful loaned me a book this week:  Wayne Muller's A Life of Being, Having, and Doing Enough. I read these words:

The ancient tension between justice and mercy is found everywhere in the world. While we may experience it most immediately in our own minds and hearts, this tension informs our medical systems, our political ideologies, even our religious beliefs. If people are basically bad, defective, broken, then they will need to be fixed, shaped, purged of sin, and punished. If on the other hand, people are essentially good, then we need to be nourished, supported, encouraged and taught. 

I grew up in the earlier system Muller describes.  But the older I get and the more I experience, the clearer it becomes that the Imago Dei. (our being created in the image of God), is far stronger than the brokenness of the world we live in.

I do believe it has to be chosen.  We have ancient patterns of condemnation and fighting for power.  Grace and abundance—the very Being of our Heavenly Father—have to be sought.

The thing is that those who seek it find it.

And it is beautiful.