"Salvation comes from our God, who is seated on the throne and from the Lamb," we read in today's first reading, Rev 7: 2--4, 9-14. Being saved, being made whole, being healed, being restored to the fullness of life is a gift from God, our Savior. We see this process of being made whole, of striving for a restoration to wholeness, happening when we cut ourselves, for instance. Our bodies naturally heal. We see death and dying all around us this fall, as the leaves fall to the ground, disintegrate and become fertilizer for new life to burst forth in spring. The never-ending cycle of birth and rebirth are daily examples of restoration to new life, to wholeness, to returning to fullness of life as God's gift to us.
It is not, I believe, just when we enter eternal life and receive a new body that we know God's gift of salvation. We know it now here on earth in situations described above and in relationships that are restored when we co-operate with grace, seeking forgiveness after we have brought pain into another person's life. Cyclically, beginning with the Trinity in the relationship of Father to Son to Holy Spirit and in the Trinity's relationship with each one of us and us with each other, the creative and healing powers of God flow, bringing us, every day, to a new level of wholeness, to an ever-expanding level of fruition, and to a sharing more and more in the fullness of life Jesus promises us in the Scriptures.
Truly, "[b]lessing and glory, wisdom and thanksgiving, honor, power, and might..." (Rev 7: 2-2, 9-14) belong to the Almighty, the all-knowing, the all-loving, the all-good God, who put into existence these creative energies, beginning with the start of creation--humankind part of the ongoing process of creation--and extending to eternal life.
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