What good is it to believe in a merciful, forgiving God if we are not able or willing to forgive ourselves? Sister Helen Prejean who has given years of her life to accompanying inmates on death row—some who have committed atrocious crimes—reminds us that no person is defined by the worst thing he or she has done in their life. The inherent dignity, value, and meaning of their lives are not staked and chained to the most horrendous or injurious deed they have done nor by the most necessary, virtuous, or noble act they failed to do. Nor are we so fastened.

It is humans—not the Divine—who like to define and confine people forever. But the ridiculous love of God is intended to set people free and is capable of doing so.

There is no screw-up, no sin, immorality, or evil so deep that God cannot get under it to hold and carry.

There is no misdeed, wrongdoing, crime, or transgression so wide that God cannot get His arms around it.

There is no stack of offenses, violations, abominations, so heinous and high that God cannot get above and compassionately cover with tender mercy.

There is no wound inflicted, no harm done, no hurt caused that God is unwilling or unable to forgive nor is there any trauma experienced, affliction suffered, pain undergone, or agony endured that is too heavy for God to bend down, scoop up, and put into Her lap along with us.

All those who have languished in anguish, all those who for days, weeks, months, years have been bogged down by guilt, all those who have walked through the shadow of the valley of death, all those who have shrunk in shame and ingested the poison of self-loathing and endless blame are taken into the lap of God, cradled in the mercy seat of divine love and compassion until the shaking sobs of all the earth are soothed and softened and subside so that we and others in kinship with the earth can be consoled and healed and freed forever to live, to love, and to be loved.

The ridiculous love of God will make it so.

ARTWORK: Yeye Yemonja ~ Charmaine Minniefield

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