I saw this guy the other week, whose wife just left him for
another man. And he was still wearing his wedding ring and he had that hopeful
“We’re going make it through this” kind of feeling. He was trying to convince
himself that it’s going to be ok, but it didn’t look like she was coming back.
A close friend of mine was telling me that she doesn’t have
the same kind of beliefs as her family. Every time she goes to a reunion, they
all turn on her and she’s just like, “they just get mean and angry, it just
gets ugly really fast”
She leaves in tears.
Every time.
Everyone I know has wounds. And some are small, kind of
petty, “you just have to get over it” types of things. But for a lot of people,
they’re big and serious, deep wounds. Like those documentaries you watch and
halfway into the story, the girl just says, “I was raped”.
We can speculate why all this happens, why people do these
types of things, and we can try to figure it out forever. But I think what we
really want is to be free from this, don’t we? We just want to be alive,
healthy, and whole. I mean, I don’t want my past to determine what my life is
going to be like. I don’t want the bad decisions that I’ve made to forever
identify who I am. Do you?
It can be big things or it can be small. Maybe for you it
was just an off-handed comment by somebody you don’t even know. But maybe it
was somebody you really loved, or that you still love, and they left you. A
business partner who took the money and ran. A relative who abused you. A friend
who turned on you. Then, you start trying not to think about it but if you’re
like me, you simply end up thinking about it even more than ever. We want to
put this stuff behind us, but how?
Or has this ever happened? Just when you think your over it,
you think its in the past, then suddenly you either run into that person or you
run into something that reminds you of them and what happened between you. It
just all comes back like worse than ever. And you thought you were over it but
now you’re more into it than ever and the wound is reopened, and it hurts, so
much. It becomes a day, a week, or 10 years later and now it’s just become a
part of you. Like you can’t shake it and you can’t leave it behind.
I don’t know what you’re carrying around; I don’t know how
painful it is, how heavy it is, or how long you’ve been carrying it. But my
question is, our question is, where was God when this happened to me? Where was
God when I made that decision?
In the book of Psalms it says that Gods “eyes are on the
nations.” And in the book of Proverbs, it says that the “eyes of God are
everywhere.” So whatever was done to you, whatever wrong was done to any of us,
God saw it. God was right there.
In the book of Romans, chapter 12, the writer says, “Don’t
take revenge but leave room for God.” He simply says, “Just turn it over to God
and let him take care of it!” It’s a nice idea but it isn’t very easy to do, is
it?
Revenge is part of our world. We’ll say things like, “I’ll settle the score” or “I’ll teach them” or
“They’ll learn not to mess with me” We talk like this all the time. But think
about revenge in the deepest spiritual levels. Revenge is really saying to
God, “I don’t trust you to deal with this situation. This person wronged me and
I can’t turn it over to you because I don’t know what you’re going to do here.” It's simply saying, “So, God, I don’t trust you. And if I get
revenge, I can control what happens here. I can control the situation. I
actually think I can you your job better than you can.”
I think this is why freedom is so central to Jesus’s
teachings. It’s right at the heart of his message. God has forgiven us from all
of our sins. He doesn’t hold any of our pasts against us. None of us have clean
hands, do we? We all wronged someone. But with Jesus, there’s no condemnation, there’s
no list of wrongs, there’s no judgment. The cross is Gods way of saying “I don’t hold the past against you.”
Some people have a warped view of God. They think God’s just
waiting to punish them for any wrong things they do. And so even when it comes
to doing the right thing, like in this case, forgiveness, there’s this paranoia
that if they step out of line at all, God’s waiting right there to squash them.
And so any runny nose or any accident, people assume that it’s God punishing
them because they weren’t doing the right thing at that time. Everything seems
like some kind of judgment or punishment.
But this isn’t the kind of picture that Jesus paints of God.
Jesus gives us these pictures of a God who’s full of love and grace and mercy and forgiveness. Who keeps pursuing us and keeps insisting that his way
is the best possible way to live. So when I forgive somebody, I’m giving
them what God has given to me.
Have you ever heard somebody say, “You know what? They don’t
understand. What they did to me was so horrible. I will never forgive them. I
can’t forget what they did.”
But what if God said
that?
To forgive is to let it go. It's to give up the desire to reprise.
But ultimately, to really forgive somebody, I have to actually wish them well.
I have to hope that good comes their way. Otherwise, if I’m unable to do that,
then I’m really just waiting for them to get punished. I haven’t forgiven them.
Maybe the real point of forgiveness is not other people. We
talk about setting them free and letting them go but maybe forgiveness is
ultimately about me and you, us. Because when I forgive somebody and I set them
free, its like I’m really setting myself free. When I let them off the hook, I’m
really letting myself off the hook. If I’m still carrying all the stuff around,
it’s a miserable way to live.
I don’t know what you’re carrying around, or how long you’ve
been carrying it. But as we journey through life, we hurt, and we get wounded,
and we end up carrying these debts that people owe us. We carry them
with us everywhere we go. And after a while, these bags get heavy don’t they?
They can end up making the journey exhausting. God didn’t create you to carry
that stuff around. God created you to be free from bitterness, from rage and
anger and revenge. Free from feeling like you’re the judge of the world. What
does it look like to just let it go?
Maybe you have to do something; maybe it’s a phone call, an
email, or a face-to-face conversation. Or maybe there’s just that moment where
deep in the very fiber of your being you just say, I’m not going carry that
around for one more day. And this might be the first step in a long process of
letting it go. But we need to start that today; we need to do that today. Now.
Forgiving is an action, is something you do.
So may you forgive as you’ve been forgiven. May you give to
others what’s been given to you. May you set someone free and find out that it
was you. And may you do it today.
Because you might not have the chance tomorrow.
