The Door is Always Open

I was reading the Friday Daily Devotion when I had cause to reflect on the magnitude of the word forgiveness. God can forgive our transgressions and sins. God also admonishes us to forgive one another, and so we try to do that. Usually we, or others, say we are sorry and promise not to do it over again. The result is, happily, that we are forgiven or are able to forgive. This is an important way to move on in love.

I suddenly realized that God is also making a greater promise. The new covenant is about something even more profound than a promised response to a confession of bad or wrongful behavior.

God is, in fact, saying that there is forgiveness in advance.When God says it has forgiven us our sins, it is saying that there is nothing, nothing, that can destroy the pipeline between us and it. It is a forgiveness that proceeds wrongdoing. There is nothing that we can do that prevents us from moving into union with God. The sin is only a temporary impediment, created by us, not by God. God's door is always open. God's forgiveness is absolute and without end. 

This great promise takes us beyond the important examination of each infraction, and places forgiveness into a larger context.

The old world view that the sins of the fathers are visited upon us, or that our sins keep us in some profound way from God has truly fallen away with the new covenant that God has made to us. It is simple and easy. God is saying "I will always be there for you". Come to me. Here I Am.

St. Teresa of Avila talks about this union with God in her book "The Interior Castle". I wish I could get there but am afraid that I am too in love with earthly things to achieve that  beautiful place.