Agape for Creation

Because I finished a very rough first rough draft of the book, I continue commenting on each chapter by now turning to chapter 7. With this chapter I finished describing the 7-step agape prayer practice.
 
Here are a few excerpts from this final chapter:
From our very limited human perspective, our spiritual development is enhanced by accepting a visualization of participation in agape expansion. To aid in this visualization, STEP 7 can be thought of as a series of expansions as ‘the circle of agape’ is understood to expand out and out to ever larger ‘groups.’ To be able to put it into words, imagine Step 7 involving six expansions:

For example, by going from your neighborhood or housing complex out to other areas of your town or city or suburb. Also you could go from one school out to whole school districts.

Another expansion of prayer concern could flow out to a whole state, then out to regions of a country. Further expansion would be to nations near yours. Imagine how a future could unfold in which the consciousness of agape could spread and aid in bringing about creative methods for promoting justice and better understanding between antagonistic cultural groups and eventually produce creative ways to solve problems in relations between nations.

Then expand your prayer for agape to continents and then out to the whole world. Let your imagination open up to creative ways for spiritual development throughout humanity. Envision the possibility of a world in which people could come together to produce long-lasting, creative ways to deal with international problems so that nations would no longer need to resort to military conflict to try solving problems. When the inspiration found in John 3:16 is studied backwards and forwards, the implication becomes the following: God’s agape is for the world [in Greek, “cosmos”], and Christ was sent to start spreading the eternal Life power of agape to all.

And finally, as we remember parts of the Bible where concern is given for non-human creatures, we realize that eventually we need to extend our agape prayer beyond human communities. So we need to realize that, in the spiritual sense, Agape Prayer gives the feeling of following God’s agape as it spreads out to Creation itself. So the last part of Step 7 is to follow God’s agape to all of Creation. That’s why it’s been important throughout all these steps to keep in mind that we are not the originators but are sensing the flow of God’s agape.