Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. Ephesians 4:32
Unforgiveness will turn you into someone you never intended to be, displaying the attitudes and qualities you detest in others. – Nancy DeMoss
There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness. – Josh Billings
A happy marriage is the union of two forgivers. – Ruth Bell Graham
At that point Peter got up the nerve to ask, “Master, how many times do I forgive a brother or sister who hurts me? Seven?” Jesus replied, “Seven! Hardly. Try seventy times seven.” Matthew 18:21-22, MSG
I’ve heard some amazing Lenten sacrifices in this year’s offerings, from much-needed radiation treatment for an advancing cancer to finally laying down grief in the loss of a dearly loved parent.
Here’s one I have not heard, although I have no doubt it’s being offered:
How about forgiving?
There are some really great wins and guarantees to our forgiving an offense:
(1) it lessens its intensity
(2) it reduces its frequency of reminding you of the offense
(3) it expands my capacity to (finally!) be a loving, inoffensible person
If we truly see the wealth of what can be gained by simply forgiving, we might not only adopt it as a Lenten possibility, but a lifetime reality.
To fail to extend forgiveness–even to someone who does not request it–puts the offended person in a bunkered-down state. Moving forward is out of the question. There is no future for an unforgiving person, only the baleful reliving of the past. Over and over again. It is deadly toxic and crippling.
Of all the things that choke and poison spiritual growth, resentments are probably the most devastatingly effective. E. Stanley Jones
Stop living as though someone else is to blame for your life. Get revenge on whoever offended you by letting them out of your debtor’s jail. The joke will be on them. While they think they are getting a reprieve, it will be you who will finally breathe the fresh air and run through fields of wildflowers beneath cobalt skies. Go on, forgive them. Release it. Let it go.
It is said of only a select few in the scriptures that their names were “esteemed” in heaven. That smallish lot earned such praise because they obeyed God faithfully, served humbly and led principled, exemplary lives. Dad, we’ve no doubt your name is well-spoken of from one end of glory to the other, and this is our attempt to fittingly esteem your life in this side of eternity. And what a life it has been! Like Abraham, Job and David, your days have been full and your years have known the richness of a life greatly lived.
Eighty years ago, you were born beneath the thickening clouds of Great Depression yet the little boy with glacier-blue eyes and a mop of sandy-blonde hair atop his head smiled mischievously in the face of hard times and rose above with l’esprit de la vie beautifully marked by resilience, gusto, grit and the grace of God. The sorrows and difficulties of those early years only emblazoned the stuff of greatness deep in your being and tempered sensitivity and kindness from your heart. How blessed are we to say to the world: this man is our Dad!
You are a man of few words yet your life is a library of reference for splendid living. Not long ago, a man who was gifted with a golden tongue said “I talk and talk and talk, and I haven’t taught people in fifty years what my father taught by example in one week.” Hear, hear. We have learned much from your life, Dad. You are a living epistle of true wisdom that fits beautifully in your children’s hands. The cover is tenderly worn, the edges have gone from crisp to aged and the pages are dog-eared but only because there is so much of your life that is worth bookmarking. So much legacy to mine and plumb.
The Psalmist says, “The entrance of Thy words giveth light” (Psalm 119:130) to which your life, Dad, eloquently testifies. Each of us kids remember that same early morning liturgy rehearsed again and again across the years and how it has planted in us the hunger to know God more through the sacred scriptures.
There you sit, at the breakfast table, always before the early rays of morning gild the edges of the quiet pre-dawn, your head bowed over the Book of books; black coffee steams in a mug at your elbow but before a spoonful of cereal is raised to your mouth, God gets you first. This is how the morning greeted us! Could any other legacy be more necessary for a child? You read as though you were consuming food, for indeed you were, and your inner life glowed hotter than even the day before and not quite as much as it would the following morning. You read so the words would cleanse your soul and send you into the day with a vitality that was not your own.
Each day, every week, month after month and across the expanding bridge of decades, your life has gone up to God as a sweet savor of incense. It might seem a strange thing to say of a grown man that he is sweet, and yet it so perfectly speaks of you. All who have ever known you, Dad, would agree when the record of your life is tallied, you come up a very sweet man. Sweet, as in, endearing. Winsome. Grace-filled. Affable. Kind.
Handsome, young and fresh out of the Air Force, it was 1953 and you made an amazing, life-changing discovery. Trapped inside a set of revolving doors at the YMCA of Harvey, Illinois, was a beautiful brunette that caught your eye. You tried to strike up a conversation with her but found her aloof and uninterested. Today, your kids are giddy with delight that you did not let this deter you. You Romancer you! You finally swept her off her feet and barely a year later, you married Mom on a glorious spring day, for richer and for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death should separate you. A long and lasting home was established, beginning with the arrival of your firstborn, eleven months later.
That home became a little slice of heaven on earth, rooted and grounded in godliness, when you were gloriously reborn! Thank God for that little mission church in Calumet City that you, Mom and your little girl began attending, and thank God for the “angel that led you to the Lord”! That angel, of course, was Pastor Wayne Angel, and he saw you in that pew, trembling there under deep conviction, and he walked back to where you were standing, asked if you were ready to surrender your life to Jesus, and you said yes. Bless you, Dad, for saying yes!
In a society of dysfunctional families, it has been our singular fortune to not only be blessed with a Dad, but a very good Dad, a doting Dad with firm hand and loving heart, a godly Dad who has lived only to see his children say yes to Jesus also and establish their homes in Christ. Thank you, Dad, for caring enough to point out the way to us. We, too, have been led to the Lord by an angel.
And when we’ve heard you sing your testimony with songs like “I’d Rather Have Jesus” or “The Love of God” and “How Great Thou Art” in that deep, rich, bass voice of yours, we’ve heard what angels must sound like when they praise the Lamb who sits on the Throne. We know our Father in glory beams when He hears you sing. We sure do.
So I was thinking all the way through south Georgia yesterday afternoon. Actually, the ghost of my “old man” spooked me a couple times this week. Earlier in the week someone close to me spoke a hard word into my life and my self went into self-defense mode immediately. I wouldn’t even take it to the Lord to see if this was Him. I knew it wasn’t. Couldn’t be. Not from this person. Flames shot from the orbs of my eyes and smoke billowed from flared nostrils. I told my wife about it and promptly opened the screen of my laptop intending to write them the mother of all emails.
“Don’t do it, Scott,” the Holy Spirit warned.
How strange that He looks a lot like Sandy, I thought to myself.
“If you can’t support me, then leave!” I commanded Him (her).
“I’m telling you, you’ll regret it.”
“No I won’t. Now leave me alone!”
Out she walked. I fumed. Pecking out a string of words, I could feel the evil rise up in me. A mirror of sorts materialized and I saw my old self grinning devilishly, egging me on. Oh, he’ll pay, it said. And you will feel so much better. That gave inspiration for another phrase or two and yet another niggling unsettledness prompting me to go “Pac-Man” on them with my backspace key. Y’ever get so mad you don’t know who you’re mad at? That’s the place I was in. Although I never sent the email my mirrored image was dying for me to send, my heart was wrong. And the anger only festered. Yeah, I ‘obeyed’ the Spirit, but there was no life in it. The Lord had me dead to rights and was setting me up.
I suppose that ire was bubbling away inside me still as I came upon the shaved-headed so-and-so in the red car outside of Tifton, Georgia yesterday afternoon. He was in the left lane and traveling slower than Christmas so I flashed him. Immediately I saw his fist go to the air and watched it sprout a middle digit. About this time, Sandy looked up from her book when she heard me snort. Just in time, I add ruefully, to see the middle finger and me hitched to his rear bumper. It was then she looked over at me and gave me the finger, albeit with her stare.
“What are you doing?”
“I want this…this…JERK to get out of the way. Can you believe him?” my voice shrilled, looking for sympathy from my beloved.
Alas, there was none.
“Stop it, Scott!”
“What?!?” I could see immediately it was going to be my issue.
“Slow down, you’re going to get us all killed!”
“All? I think this bozo needs to die.” The words came out like toothpaste from a tube. Too late.
Sandy went back to her book. I sulked. I fumed. God bided His time. No one was speaking, not for the longest time. I’d turn to God in my thoughts with a C’mon, give me a break! Can’t you see how crappy this week has been? And I’m the innocent one in all this, but I could feel Him looking down at whatever He was reading too.
A few hours ago, the Lord summoned me. They were the first words I’d heard Him speak in my direction for some time, so I was glad. What I didn’t know was He had opened the door to a woodshed and invited me in. I was so delighted with the attention I gaited merrily inside, thinking it’s about time. I opened my journal and began pouring out my heart to him, defending myself from the get go, reminding Him I was His man and this must be persecution and all that. Instantly, He went into silent mode again. I wasn’t listening. I was doing all the talking and defending, so He quietly shut the door behind Him and cleared His throat.
I stopped. Looking around, I could tell I didn’t like this room at all. Then I had the strange sensation I’d been here before. Many times. I sat still as a stone, knowing I’d best listen as what I was about to hear was going to be the answer to my cry for so long: Lord, whatever is in me that needs to die, painful as it is, do it. Do me, Lord!
The one thing about God, He doesn’t tap dance very often. Mostly, He gets right to the point.
“You were wrong, Scott.”
“You mean, the other day? Well, I know I was yesterday. But, Lord…”
“You were wrong. I sent My servant to tell you.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“If you continue to reject his word, you reject Me.”
He told me I was to write this person, humiliating myself in the process, telling him I was wrong, he was right and (gulp) asking his forgiveness. He also told me what to say, no more, no less. But still I found a way to obey God and get an old man ‘dig’ in as well. That should do it, I thought somewhat satisfactorily. I wanted to save a little face at least, to hold onto some measure of dignity. Ah, but that’s the stuff of self.
(There you are, you old codger. I thought you were dead.)
“Take that out,” the Lord said. “Nothing more, nothing less.”
“Yes, Lord.” And I took it out.
Did it hurt to do it? Oh my, and how. But I could never want to be on the other side of God’s holiness. The woodshed is as far as I want to ever go. Funny thing how it is also such a grace-filled room. There’s some real one-on-one attention in the woodshed, some real heart-to hearts in there.
Even still, I think I’ll steer clear of it for awhile, thank you very much.
