Is forgiveness the message that we really need to
proclaim above all other in these days?
I think it might be. It so often
seems that we live in a blame culture.
We are always looking for somebody whose fault it is and what we can get
out of them by way of compensation.
Forgiveness is counter-cultural, but at the heart of our faith. David Stevens, a former leader of the
Corrymeela Community, has said this: “The gospel offers us an alternative
reality to fearful, frozen and defensive living. It invites us to imagine ourselves and our
world differently. Reconciliation in
Christ takes us to a new place – the house of Christ – where we think, speak
and act in his way, where fear becomes trust and hurt permits healing. Christ breaks down the middle wall of
partition and invites us all into a space created by him to find people who
were previously our enemies.”[1]
This, in turn, allows us to go further and to recognise that God
will heal. Healing means wholeness. God will make things whole, that is as they
should be. One of the great things we
discover as we follow God’s way is just how great God’s love is and what that means
in terms of things being as they should be.
God’s love is immense. As Desmond
Tutu has it in his book ‘No Future Without Forgiveness’ – “Someone has said
there is nothing I can do to make God love me more, for God loves me perfectly
already. And wonderfully, there is
nothing I can do to make God love me less.
God loves me as I am.”[2] As my kids might say to me – how good is
that? I am not going to pretend that
things never get messed up. That is
patently untrue. We live in a chaotic
world and we often find ourselves having to cope with some of the struggles and
problems which that produces. But
somewhere in there, always, is God’s love.
Somewhere, always, too, is the call to be God’s people.
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