God Forgives And So Should We
Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?”
Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.”
-- Matthew 18:21-22
She just buried her husband two days ago. His sister had died 10 days before that. She is recovering from hip replacement surgery that came after a fall that came after a broken pelvis. It is not the best of times.
And yet another woman’s anger lingers. Her hardened heart can’t feel sympathy or compassion. She can’t let go of something that happened more than 20 years before.
She calls herself justified. And, indeed, the older woman hurt her badly. But she didn’t confront the woman at the time. She didn’t try to understand why someone would hurt her so badly. She didn’t forgive.
Instead, she has told the story again and again over the years. Not to “bad-mouth” the woman, she says, but to tell her side of a story most of us don’t care about. Because after all these years, what does it matter? People hurt us because we are all flawed. That’s just the way of life. What we do with that hurt determines who we are inside.
This woman considers herself to be a strong Christian, and she is. She does good for many people, trying to live her faith in works and deeds. And, yet, she can’t forgive. There is no love in her heart for her enemy of long ago.
We can all relate, can’t we? We’ve probably all got someone in our lives that we need to forgive. I’m not saying we should ignore abuse, especially when it continues on and on. We should remove ourselves from the situation and take appropriate steps to protect ourselves and others. But forgiving someone who hurt our feelings years ago? Oh, come on! Let it go.
After Peter asked this question, Jesus told the parable of the man who couldn’t pay his debt to the king. The man begged for more time and the king had compassion on him and forgave his debt. Then the man went out and demanded that another servant repay the debt he owed to him. When the man begged for more time, this man refused and had the man thrown into prison until he could repay the debt. Those who saw what happened went and told the king.
“Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said. ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you.”
-- Matthew 18:32
God forgives us. We should forgive others. The end.
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