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Sunday, July 19, 2009

Forgiveness

For three very long days this week my sons and two friends of the family, who were childhood friends of my youngest son, came to replace the roofing shingles on our home. They worked under the threat of rain for most of that time. Indeed they did work in the rain one afternoon. Tarps were used to cover exposed areas during the nights. The good news was that heat, sun exposure and dehydration were not issues during the job. All four worked so very hard for long hours in order to get an excellent job done. I was proud of the work ethic displayed by my sons and indeed all four of these young men in the prime of life.

While they worked, the camaraderie was very apparent with joking and laughter being a large part of the days. One of the young men, a childhood friend of my son, said something during the job that made me really stop and think. I was expressing my thanks for his help for about the hundredth time and he said to me jokingly, “This is my way of making up for the grape pop on your carpet and the broken ceramic tile in your kitchen”. These were incidents that occurred more than twenty years ago in a house we no longer own. I had no memory whatsoever of the broken tile, but I must admit the grape pop incident was coming back to me through the mists of time. Forgiveness and forgetting had been granted for these very minor incidents a very long time ago.

Psalm 103 came into my mind immediately. We are forgiven our transgressions with mercy and finality by a loving and gracious God. Every one of us has sin in our lives, yet the God of the universe chooses not to even remember our wrongs.

11 For as the heavens are high above the earth, So great is His mercy toward those who fear Him;
12 As far as the east is from the west, So far has He removed our transgressions from us.

In these beautiful verses we who fear the LORD are assured that our sins have been removed from us about as far as you can go. East and west will never meet. I read the word “fear” more as words like obey, believe in, respect and love.

Just as we are forgiven, we are expected to forgive each other. This is not a recommendation, it is a must. If we are to be forgiven then we are required to forgive others.

When Peter asked Jesus how often we should forgive a sinning brother or sister, in Matthew 18:22, He answered the following.

Jesus said to him, "I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven".

What Jesus is telling us of course is that we are to forgive over and over and over again.

Do you have someone to forgive today?

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1 comment:

  1. Mark,
    I have enjoyed each of your posts. They help me to know you better and more importantly to experience our Saviour's faithfulness and grace as it plays out in the lives of my brothers and sisters.

    ReplyDelete