And forgive us our sins, as we have forgiven those who sin against us. … If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins. [Matthew 6:12,14-15 (NLT)]
It’s been nearly 50 years, but I’ll never forget that day when, out of anger and fear, I vowed, “I’ll never forgive him!” My husband and I had taken our three children shopping for school clothes. While I was busy with the eldest, my husband said he’d take the other two for a walk through the mall. Unknown to me, the three-year-old had convinced his father that he’d stay at the store, sit quietly in a little crawl-through hole by the store’s entrance, and wait for his dad’s return. Unfortunately, my husband never told me of that decision. Having the attention span of a gnat, the little guy quickly grew bored watching shoppers. After wandering into the store to hide in the clothes racks, he looked for his brother and me. Not seeing us (since we were in a changing room), the independent guy decided we’d left without him and calmly went looking for us in the mall parking lot. While I was paying for our purchases, my husband returned with only one child in tow. Almost simultaneously, with panic in our voices, we asked one another, “Where’s Scooter?” My imagination went wild with all the horrible things that could have happened to the youngster. In an instant, I decided I’d never forgive my husband for his carelessness and that our marriage would be over!
After the saleswoman made a call to mall security, we learned that a concerned woman had spotted the boy wandering in the parking lot sobbing because he was sure we’d left for home without him. She took him to security where he was enjoying a red lollipop. Through God’s good graces, his misadventure had a happy ending, but what if it hadn’t? While angrily deciding I’d never forgive my husband, it never occurred to me that he’d be hard put to forgive himself if our son was harmed in any way!
I thought of that episode after reading about a 5-year-old severely autistic child who’d wandered out of his house and was found drowned in a nearby pond. A few days later, I learned of a critically injured three-year old who’d fallen out of an industrial mowing tractor and been run over by his father. Unlike our story, those stories had sad endings. Several years ago, a friend’s grandchild died in another tragic accident. Wanting to go on a ride with his dad, the toddler had quietly left the house and was standing in the driveway when his father backed over the youngster. That accident ended up destroying a family through divorce and then the father’s suicide. Apparently, neither parent could forgive the other nor could they forgive themselves. I sometimes think of how my husband and I narrowly escaped a similar ending that day in the mall. Would we have forgiven ourselves and one another? How will the family of the child run over by that lawn mower or the parents of that special-needs child cope? Will they forgive each other? Will they ever forgive themselves? Or, as happened with our friend’s family, will one tragedy lead to others?
C.S. Lewis said, “Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive.” Indeed, forgiveness isn’t easy and, sometimes, it seems nearly impossible. Nevertheless, we ask God to forgive us in the way we forgive others. It is hypocritical for us to ask God to forgive our sins if we withhold forgiveness from anyone else. Unless we want God to pick and choose among our sins and failings, we cannot pick and choose among the actions of those who’ve failed us. We don’t get to forgive the little transgressions and withhold forgiveness on the big ones unless we want God to do the same with us.
Instead of a mall cop and a three-year-old with a red lollipop, what if our story hadn’t ended well? I’d like to think that I would have forgiven my husband and our marriage would have survived and thrived. Only God knows—I certainly don’t and I thank Him for not putting me to the test!
To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you. [C.S. Lewis]
Monday’s devotion (“No Words of Comfort”) originally was published back in 2018. It came to mind because my son-in-law recently died. His death was sudden and unexpected and, when my daughter told me, I was sure I’d misunderstood her words. Not Mike! Still a young man in the prime of his life; it couldn’t be, but it was! Just as we all know we’re going to die someday, we know the people we love will die. It’s just that we expect those deaths to be on our timeline. But they’re not—they’re on God’s. The only guarantee that comes with life on earth is that it will end!
The next day would have been Sally’s wedding anniversary but, because it marked the six-month anniversary of her husband’s death, there would be no celebration. Instead of flowers, dinner, and romance, there would be tears. That morning, Sally called her step-mother, Sue, to share her dread of the following day. When telling us this, Sue admitted to being at a loss for words of consolation. A woman of faith and an ordained pastor, Sue’s difficulty in finding comforting words was because her step-daughter is Jewish. When Sue married Sally’s Jewish father, she respected her new family’s faith just as they respected hers. They knew her beliefs and what she did for a living and Sue gladly answers their questions. Nevertheless, she chooses her words carefully when speaking of the Lord and neither evangelizes nor condemns. Although her words that morning were as reassuring as they could be without speaking of Jesus, Sue knew they were nowhere near as comforting as they could have been.
When writing about forgiveness these last few days, I wondered why we find it so difficult to forgive. Perhaps it’s because, in our troubled hearts, we want to even the score before doing so. Wanting to retaliate in some way, bitterness and resentment grow and eat at us until we can extract our pound of flesh.
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).
Several years ago, two friends joined the ranks of widowhood within a week of one another. Because her husband surrendered to cancer several months earlier by stopping all treatment, one woman was not surprised when she joined the club. The other woman, however, went to bed a wife and awoke the next morning to find herself a widow. Despite his looking the picture of health, her husband, having suffered a fatal stroke while she slept, lay dead on the kitchen floor.
Devotions of the Heart 