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]
Built by her husband’s grandfather in the 1920s, my friend’s house was filled with much of the original furniture. Many pieces (like the restored grand piano) were valuable antiques but decades of use had taken their toll on others. Although the beautiful little mahogany side chair looked solid, a note saying “Broken—do not use” rested on it. Pretty as it was, the chair was useless and an invitation to disaster. Should the warning go unnoticed, some unknowing person could end up sprawled on the floor surrounded by splintered wood.
Thousands of years ago, God told Noah to build a boat the height of a four-story house, the length of one-and-a-half football fields, and with the storage capacity of about 450 semi-trailers. Without benefit of Home Depot or power tools, he managed to do it. What would happen if God gave Noah those same instructions today?
In my last post, I pondered why Jesus chose the men he did as his apostles. As we enter Holy Week and the events leading to the Lord’s arrest and crucifixion, I wonder specifically about Judas Iscariot. We don’t know what Jesus saw in Judas when he was chosen as one of the twelve or even what was in Judas’ heart in the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. We only know that discontent, ambition, and greed had entered his treacherous heart by the end.
Jeremiah told the exiles to work and pray for their captors. He explained that it was the shalom (well-being, peace, health, success, safety, and welfare) of their captors that they would ensure Judah’s shalom. For a people who’d been torn from their homeland and Temple, I expect it was difficult to understand how seeking Babylon’s prosperity would help them; but, it did!
Jeremiah’s instructions to work and pray for the welfare of Babylon was a unique and completely unprecedented concept in the ancient world. Rather than praying for retaliation and Babylon’s collapse, God commanded them to pray for their Babylonian captors and work for the peace and prosperity of the land! Rather than rebels and a source of trouble and insurrection, the exiles were to become reliable and valuable members of the community. It seems they took God’s command to heart.
Devotions of the Heart 