Spiritual Survival Guide
3: Forgiveness
4. Keep putting the relationship first. In our desire for justice and revenge we tend to put rules first. And the rules say, “Behave this way and you’re out. Cross this line, and don’t bother coming back. Treat me this way, and you’re no friend of mine, no brother of mine, no son of mine.” But that’s not the way of Jesus. He calls us to put relationships first. 5. Look for God’s hand in the process. All along we’ve been saying that in forgiveness we don’t sugarcoat the truth. And the truth is, we do some terrible things to each other. And yet in God’s amazing mercy, we can also see God’s hand reaching down to bring something good out of this difficult experience. In the midst of relationship bitterness, there’s noth- ing sweeter than the taste of forgiveness. Forgiveness. It’s love’s toughest work. It’s love with its sleeves rolled up. But we know about love. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends! (Be sure to check out the famous description of Christian love in 1 Corinthians 13.)
means by that. Forgiveness happens best when it can be eye-to-eye, face-to-face. But sometimes that just isn’t possible because the person we need to forgive is gone. Sometimes they avoid us. Other times the people we need to forgive are invisible. The unknown rival gang member who killed our friend— invisible. The bully who made school a living hell—long gone. And sometimes the people we need to forgive are already dead. They’ve died before we had a chance to face them and forgive them. For some of us, the toughest work of forgiveness isn’t the faceless enemy. More often than not, our biggest enemy has a face we know all too well. It’s the face that we see in the mirror every morning. Truth be told, many of us have a terrible time forgiving ourselves. Listen to what some of our guys said about this:
When It’s Really Hard to Forgive
We can list all kinds of things we are called upon to forgive. And all of them are awful. All of them. The truth is, there’s no top ten list of the worst hurts. How could we ever measure or compare such things? How can we ever truly know the depth of hurt or hate inside someone else? We don’t even understand our own hearts all that well. And yet, there are times when it’s really, really hard for any of us to forgive, even when we want to forgive, even when our hearts are willing to forgive. Jesus says, “Love your enemies,” and forgiveness is part of what Jesus
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