Psalm 130, Ezekiel 18:21-28, and Matthew 5:20-26
One of my greatest weaknesses is an inability to easily forgive folks who have hurt me or who have hurt my loved ones. Specifically, I have an incredibly difficult time initiating such forgiveness. I guess this also plays into some twisted sense of pride in that I don't want to initiate the act of forgiving someone if I don't believe that they see the wrong that I feel like they have committed. This can be a terrible burden to carry, and I know that I should find a way to loose the ties of such burdens, but what then will I gnash my teeth about?
We all know that forgiveness is one of the basic tenets of our faith. There is plenty of Scripture pointing to the necessity of forgiveness in order to have a whole body, both individually and as a community, and seeking forgiveness is at the liturgical middle of our celebration of the Holy Eucharist at the offering of the Peace.
Our Scripture today points to the need for forgiveness, the need to clear the air between folks who experience tension of any kind, especially as we prepare to offer our gifts back to God. Worshipping with a heavy heart keeps us all attaining the peace God wants us to have. Also, though, worshipping allows us to recognize that there are people in our lives with whom we are not reconciled.
Hopefully, though, we can find the strength and courage necessary to offer forgiveness to those people in our lives who have hurt us. Even more so, hopefully we can find it in ourselves to ask for forgiveness from people we may have hurt.
1 comment:
Southerners tend to be willing for the most part{after a time} to forgive; but I hope we are not being asked to forget....that is harder, even though it is closely akin to forgiveness.
It seems that in today's world, with marriage and divorce so lightly entered into and out of that forgiveness might come easier, but there always seems to be one in a broken marriage [where they were not both willing to try to fix it]who will neither forgive not forget....any yet there is no such thing as a 50/50 marriage...both parties probably need to be ready to do much more to make it work. ..
is it not an irony that in no place short of our relationship with God is forgiveness more needed than in a relationship; but while God is ready to forgive and take us back we cannot readily do the same for friends or spouses
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