Satisfy us each morning with your unfailing love, so we may sing for joy to the end of our lives. Psalm 90: 14

A Bird's Eye View of Forgiveness

            What is forgiveness? I mean among humans. Can a wife's forgiveness be bought with diamonds, as one jewelry store billboard I've seen suggests? The word FORGIVENESS is sprawled across the billboard in all caps, and in place of the letter "O" there's a multi-carat diamond the size of a tractor tire. Well, if forgiveness can be bought, that surely ought to do it! Can forgiveness be bought? Is there a chart? Diamonds are for major offenses and flowers are for minor ones? Does the gift compel one to forgive?

            What about the neighbor who cuts down your favorite tree, the one that's on your property line, the one he claims was more his than yours? What does forgiveness look like there? Or what about the close friend or fellow church member who spreads gossip about you? Are you compelled to forgive that person? I think we'll have to agree that forgiving others is not an option if we want God to forgive us. Scripture is clear about that. 

              But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins (Matthew 6:15).

            But what does forgiveness look like in these circumstances? How does it feel? Is it a warm, fuzzy feeling that makes you feel like hugging the person? If you don't feel warm and fuzzy, does it mean you haven't truly forgiven? How does forgiveness among people play out in daily life? Does forgiving someone mean you should trust them? No, no, and no!

            Forgiveness is not warm and fuzzy; it is a deliberate act of obedience to God. The greater the offense against us, the more this is true. I think of Corrie ten Boom extending her hand to one of her former Nazi jailers. She didn't feel like shaking his hand, but she did it anyway as a deliberate act of obedience to God. Forgiveness is the most difficult thing we're called to do in this life.

            Forgiveness is fierce. It is a lion, not a lamb.

            Forgiveness, especially for major acts of betrayal, requires grit and determination. We speak the words, "I forgive you," but that doesn't mean we feel them. Speaking forgiveness, even when we don't feel it requires us to trust God with the outcome. Sometimes feeling follows obedience, sometimes it doesn't. We can't control how we feel, but we can control how we act.

            Forgiveness is a beginning, not an end.  Forgiveness, like God's grace, can't be earned.

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do (Ephesians 2: 8 – 10).

            Forgiveness is a good work God calls us to do, but it doesn't require us to trust the person who hurt us. Unlike forgiveness, trust, once broken, must be earned. Forgiveness makes restoration possible, but it does not guarantee it or require it. We are not required to confide in a gossip, or hand our tree-felling neighbor a chain saw. We are not required to trust the person who has betrayed us, or enter into close relationship with that person.

            Yesterday, I pulled into my favorite spot in the parking garage on campus, a spot that faces a church building across the street. High atop the church's towering steeple, a bronze cross pierces the sky. I like to look up at that cross every morning. It centers me both spatially (to help me find my car at the end of a long day!) and spiritually. Ah, yes, Daye, in your dealings with people today, remember the Cross. . . .

            Yesterday morning, a blackbird fluttered down through the blue sky and perched high on the very tip top of the cross. The wind ruffled its feathers, but it clung there tenaciously for long minutes. As I watched, it came to me that this bird's eye view is what forgiveness looks like. It's choosing to view the world and everything that happens in it from atop the Cross. Lord, give me the will and the wings to fly to there every day and hang on as if my life depends on it. Because it does.

Daye Phillippo

November 2018