Mid Thirties
Spiritual Memoir and God's Forgiveness
What God says about forgiveness is difficult for us to swallow: we are to turn the other cheek and let those who have hurt us off the hook. God's forgiveness of sins is difficult to accept: we keep trying to earn our pardon when His son has already granted pardon for us. The act of forgiveness seems crazy because we operate in a world system that says you should get what you deserve. Forgiveness really makes no earthly sense at all.
People have asked me, "What is forgiveness?" Of all the symbols of forgiveness that I can think of, Jesus Christ is the most compelling. What He did for us on the cross answers the question of forgiveness: people did the unthinkable to Jesus and He didn't change His mind about loving people. Instead, He continued to love them despite the suffering and agony that they chose to put Him through.
Forgiveness is not a fantasy: it's a true story written just for us. All God asks is that we believe in the story, accept His son as our pardon and do our best to love others as best we can. That means we won't always get what we deserve and that others might do the unthinkable to us. That means we have to choose to give our relationships to God and ask Him to help us respond lovingly to the unlovable. This is the only way that we can escape the reality of getting and giving what is deserved.
I have the wisdom that comes with being a woman in her mid-thrities. I understand that we're not always going to get what we deserve. Jesus got the opposite of what he deserved. We measured Him for much less than He was. It wasn’t humanly possible for Him to take loving us so far. He didn’t even keep His own body in the end. He had only a few people who were willing to see glimmers of who He really was. He enraged people. He was a problem to be solved. He was an irritation and an inconvenience. We have such a small taste of what He received and we still can't figure out how to love like we should.
How is it possible for us to love the unlovable? We need God to help us see more like Jesus sees. We need to learn how to love without putting conditions on people. We need to receive the love people are able to give to us even when it is on their terms and in their way. That’s how we will become our best. It’s also how we will help others become their best. We need love where we have hate. It’s why we need God.
I've decided only God can help us. We don't have a chance at loving without Him. We've got to surrender the ways we try to make our relationships work. What we do to make things work doesn't work anyway. We've got to trust God to take care of our relationships with the people we love and the people we don't love well at all. We've got to surrender everyone and everything to Him. This is how forgiveness can become a part of our story. It's how our story can be one that will make our Father proud.