My cousin was left a set of plates in his mother’s will. Not the kind of plates from which you eat your dinner. These were beautiful, decorative works of art that were on display in my cousin’s lounge. Problem! His sister thought she should have been left those plates by her mother so in her anger and resentment she refused to have anything to do with her brother. After years of alienation my cousin decided that his relationship with his sister was more important than those plates, so he carefully packed them up and sent them to her with a note pointing out that she was more important to him than the plates. Sadly, that didn’t help at all. She was now angry and resentful that it had taken him far too many years to figure out where the plates really belonged. She refused all overtures from her brother.
I tell you this story because it seems to me that our inability to forgive others causes a huge amount of pain, hardship and distress. Isn’t it true that our unwillingness to forgive is a great crippling cancer that eats away at our relationships – not only between individuals but also between communities and even nations? Let me give you another example.
It was at a funeral that I found myself sitting next to a man I had first met when he was a lad, still living with his parents. We had meanwhile both moved interstate and the years had passed. It was delightful to meet him again. However my delight dissolved very quickly when I asked him how his parents were doing. His reply…? “I wouldn’t know; I haven’t spoken to them for fourteen years.” Shortly afterwards I discovered that his father had terminal cancer. I took up contact with him and impressed on him the need for him to go and sort things out with his father before he succumbed to the disease. Sadly, all to no avail. The father died, unreconciled to his son.
I’m sure that you could tell similar stories. Siblings who have fallen out with one another and neither party wants to be the first to offer an apology or extend forgiveness. This inability to forgive strains relationships in the homes of the nation’s most lowly workers but no less, relationships among national leaders in government and commerce.
The Bible has some wonderful stories of forgiveness. A great example is Joseph in the book of Genesis. He’s mistreated by his eleven older brothers and sold by them as a slave into Egypt. Yet later he finds it in his heart to forgive his brothers because he realises that God had used his enslavement in a very positive way. There is also David who is hounded by King Saul. Saul is determined to kill David. Yet David refuses to take several opportunities to get even with Saul. One of the greatest examples of forgiveness is when Jesus, is being executed. While they are nailing Him to a cross He cries out, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”
Forgiveness is a core teaching of the Christian faith. God forgives. You probably have no trouble believing that God forgives. Some folk even seem to think that it’s God’s business to forgive. How could a loving God do anything else but forgive? So we quickly assume that all of our deviations from what is right and good will be overlooked by the Almighty. If you think that then you haven’t really understood the message of the Bible very well. It was only because Jesus died in our place that we are forgiven by God, as we trust in what His Son did for us on the cross. The book of Hebrews in the Bible points out that without the shedding of His blood there is no forgiveness. So how can we do the hard yards and be more forgiving of those who wrong us? Well, it’s much easier to forgive others when we ourselves have had a profound experience of being forgiven. When we personally know the enormity of what God has forgiven us then that makes it so much easier to also forgive others.
John Westendorp