The Heart Wherein to Forgive is Joy

'...if ever I offended against you in any matter great or small, forgive me now.'

'Dear King,' said the Unicorn, 'I could almost wish you had, so that I might forgive it.' 

~ The Last Battle, by C. S. Lewis

This is the gift that C.S. Lewis gives us. Showing us the joyful heart that wishes to do virtue, to have every opportunity to show love that it can be given. Where sin's existence causes no fear, because where there is sin and evil, that person knows Grace and Forgiveness may and will abound more.

We should not fear sin and evil because God has made a way that all can be made right. And God wishes deeply that in every case of our sin, His grace may be shown to be greater. Our thoughtless sin, done out of forgetfulness, should not impede our trust in God, because God is much greater than sin and evil. He wishes to show us His bounty in the face of darkness. He wishes us to have faith. Our own faithlessness is what will impede us; never God being unwilling to bestow gifts.

Whenever I have found myself to rest peacefully, believing God, then I begin to see graces hither and thither all around me. It is either as if all the good things that were become bright like stars, or else it is that more good is happening. It is impossible for me to know which- it might as well be one and the same.

In a heart of faith, opportunities are made visible. They might have been there before, but when we have faith, 'eyes to see,' we actually see them, and can catch them in our hands. Every little tiny blessing is an opportunity to praise God, and every moment of praising God is a grace to us. It lightens our hearts, it softens our hearts so that we are more malleable to the good around us, it braces us against the oncoming tide of darkness, and it becomes a shield and armour against the onslaught of life.

But instead of a heavy shield and armour, it is light, it makes our feet skip and dance, it makes us like a ninja. As the Bible says, sin is a weight... darkness in our hearts weighs us down. To be filled with God is to be filled with light and with lightness, with weightlessness, but interestingly (I dare say) a weighty weightlessness. A real weightlessness. Not vanity.

In the joyful, forgiving heart of faith, a person is able to rise above the trees and see the picture of life from above, and he is no longer afraid of what he sees. While he is weighted down, 'within' the world (in and of it, instead of in and not of it), he cannot see the path ahead, and that the story of life is a wielding of blows between good and evil, with good always having the upper hand.

I'm reminded of something I heard continuously through my life (perhaps it is from the picture in The Lion, the With and the Wardrobe of Aslan and the Stone Table), that death cannot hold Him. God is so great that no bands of evil could ever withstand Him.

(In saying that we should not fear sin, I mean also that the sorrow and grief sin evokes in us should also not be a tether: to be sorrowful is right, and it frees us to forgive others, and to submit ourselves to the forgiveness of others. It is freedom to feel even the pain of sin. All correct reactions to things are freeing.)