The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever. He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us. [Psalm 103:8-12 (ESV)]
When Moravian missionaries first arrived in the Arctic, they found no single word in the Inuktitut language for forgiveness. That doesn’t mean the Inuit people didn’t let go of past wrongs, just that they didn’t have a single world for doing so. Since forgiveness is an essential concept in Christianity, the missionaries wanted a single word that captured the kind of forgiveness found in Psalm 103. Using Inuktitut words, they came up issumagijoujungnainermik meaning “not-being-able-to-think-about-it-anymore.” This 24-letter multi-syllable word beautifully describes the God who will “cast all our sins into the depths of the sea” [Micah 7:19], who vows to “forgive their iniquity, and…remember their sin no more,” [Jeremiah 31:34], and who promises to blot out our transgressions and not remember our sins.[Isaiah 43:25]
The kind of forgiveness expressed in issumagijoujungnainermik is not limited to God. That is the kind of forgiveness we Christ-followers are to have for the offenses of others. A story about nursing pioneer and Red Cross founder Clara Barton illustrates issumagijoujungnainermik. When a friend reminded Barton of a spiteful act done to her years earlier, she acted as if it never happened. When the friend questioned, “Don’t you remember it?” Barton vehemently replied, “No! I distinctly remember forgetting it.” True forgiveness is deliberately choosing not to remember that wrong. Without our deliberate effort to put offenses aside, it’s easy for past hurts to weasel their way right back into our hearts and minds.
A recent Pickles comic strip (drawn by Brian Crane) illustrates what forgiveness isn’t. In it, Earl asks his wife Opal, “Are you mad at me for some reason?” When she reminds him that he left the refrigerator door open all night, he explains, “I didn’t mean to…I said I was sorry.” The repentant husband adds, “You said you were going to forgive and forget.” After replying that she did “forgive and forget,” Opal continues, “I just don’t want you to forget that I forgot and forgave.” Storing up our grievances and then reminding people of our forgiveness isn’t “not-being-able-to-think-about-it-anymore.” Still holding on to her grievance, it looks like Opal needs a lesson in issumagijoujungnainermik!
While it’s easy to forget where we put our glasses or keys (as both Opal and Earl frequently do), it’s not so easy to forget a wrong. Like Opal, do we say we forgive but fail to forget? D.L Moody would say that’s like burying “the hatchet with the handle sticking out of the ground, so you can grasp it the minute you want it.” It’s only by the power of the Spirit that we can practice issumagijoujungnainermik!
I can forgive, but I cannot forget, is only another way of saying, I will not forgive. Forgiveness ought to be like a cancelled note – torn in two, and burned up, so that it never can be shown against one. [Henry Ward Beecher]
In 1 Kings 21, we learn of Naboth, the owner of a vineyard adjacent to King Ahab’s palace in Jezreel. A choice piece of real estate, Ahab wanted it for himself and offered to purchase or exchange it for other land. Property, however, wasn’t to be treated as a real estate investment—it was to remain in the family to which it had been allotted. Because Jewish law prohibited Naboth from selling his ancestral land, he rejected the king’s offer. Angry at his neighbor’s refusal’s, Ahab acted like a spoiled child, took to his bed, and refused to eat. Upon learning the reason for her husband’s sulking, Jezebel hatched a devious plan. She arranged for false accusations to be made against Naboth that would result in his immediate death. Jezebel’s evil plot went as planned and, upon news of their neighbor’s death, she told Ahab the land was his and he took it for himself!
With few exceptions, when we find mention of pride in Scripture, it has a negative connotation. It refers to arrogance, conceit, disrespect, haughtiness, and effrontery. Often called stubborn, insolent, willful, and selfish, prideful people don’t fare well in Scripture. Consider Pharaoh whose pride made him stubbornly defy the power of God; as a result, his entire nation suffered plague after plague, he lost his eldest son, and his entire army was decimated. Lucifer’s insolence and pride got him evicted from heaven. Nebuchadnezzar’s conceitful boasting resulted in the king living as a field animal and eating grass for seven years! When arrogant King Uzziah overstepped boundaries and burned incense in Temple (something only priests could do), the proud king became an outcast leper. Indeed, “pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.” [Proverbs 16:18]
In the ruins of Oxyrhynchus, Egypt, a scrap of parchment known as P.Oxy. 1786 was discovered in 1918. Only 11-inches long and 2-inches wide, it consists of four lines of text along with musical notations on the back of a grain contract. Found in an ancient garbage dump, it was just one of 500,000 parchments dating from the 1st century BC to the 7th AD. Along with grocery lists, official records, and business contracts, the rubbish heap yielded a play by Sophocles, poetry by Sappho, portions of the Old Testament, fragments of both Matthew’s and Mark’s gospels, and an arrest warrant for a Christian.
Heather Kaufman’s novel Up From Dust is historical fiction. Based on what Scripture tells us about Martha of Bethany, her sister Mary, and their brother Lazarus, it gives the reader a fictionalized version of their backstories. Kaufman’s extensive research for the novel allowed her to paint a vivid and accurate picture of 1st century life in Judea. Even though the story is a figment of her imagination, it reminded me that the people who spent time with the Lord while He walked on earth were real (and flawed) people like us—each with their own personal history. Ordinary people with parents, friends and, for some, spouses and children, they had jobs, responsibilities, secrets, regrets, and weaknesses. Like us, they were people who worried, disagreed, cried, laughed, loved, rejoiced, and mourned. The only thing that made them different from their neighbors was their love for a man called Jesus!
Earlier this week, I wrote about my nephew Johnny’s baptism in my mother’s hospital room. Because she was at death’s door, my brother took emergency leave and he and I served as the baby’s sponsors in Baptism (or Godparents).
Devotions of the Heart 