Oh, did we ever have the storms, yesterday! I JUST NOW am able to get on the Internet and it is intermittent, so will keep this short.
Nothing to say except that is why I am gone and I will do better soon.
Our own property is fine and we are fine, but the whole state has been renamed “State of Emergency”, for a while.
Hope the powers that be will excuse if I do not post-a-day every day.
Pray for us. Supposed to get more tonight. 🙂
The powers-that-be have just dragged her from the bed of a man to whom she is not married.
Perhaps all she is wearing is a bedsheet.
Perhaps he is one of the powers-that-be.
Nevertheless, there she stands, exposed, before her authorities. They do not care about her. They do not care about right or wrong. The have stalked her, captured her, and reduced her to the status of rubbish for one purpose: to trick a popular counselor of that day.
“The law demands this woman be stoned to death,” they announce. Then they wait. They are so sure. They have Him this time. The Man of Mercies will have to admit that mercy does not always win. They think.
He is unperturbed. He stoops and writes in the dust. A list of their sins? Perhaps. Do they look around themselves, worriedly, confused? Perhaps.
Meanwhile, the life of a woman hangs over eternity. Perhaps, thrown down to the ground, does she cower? Perhaps. In a culture that forbids her uncovered state, in a land filled with huge stones, she waits, uncovered, for her stoning.
Finally the Man stands to speak. “And whoever is without sin should throw the first stone.” Then he resumes writing.
Beginning with the eldest–perhaps wisest–each man drops his gleeful attitude, drops his stone, drops his case. Point taken.
The kind Counselor turns to ask the woman, “Where are they? Who is accusing you?”
The answer, from inside a bedsheet: “No one.”
“Neither do I condemn you.”
Notice He does not say she did not sin, but only that He does not condemn her. She stands obviously guilty and shamed, but for her, there is now no condemnation.
Stoning is not prevalent in our society, but prostitution is. I want to ask you: How many of us have been there–a blackened past forgiven by the mercies of God?
How many of us throw away that forgiveness? How many of us hug our sad past close and get it out to look at it and mourn over it, to relive it to its fullest? How many of us labor with all our might to get out from under sin that no longer is over us? How many of us on, stormy days, add to the bad past by letting it create for us bad choices, bad attitutdes, bad excuses?
A bad present?
Jesus asked only one thing from that woman, that day, and asks it of us, too: “Go, and sin no more.”
In honor of the 400th anniversary of the translation of the Bible into English, commissioned by King James of England in 1611, and originally published by Robert Barker, printer to the King, I will use this version for the rest of this year in these posts. Hope we can enjoy the quaint differences we find here and appreciate all that went into it.
Heare, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord.
And thou shalt loue the Lord they God with all thine heart, and with all thy soule, and with all thy might.
Deuteronomy 6:4-5
There is one body, and one spirit, euen as yee are called in one hope of your calling.
One Lord, one Faith, one Baptisme,
One God and Father of all, who is aboue all, & through all, & in you all.
Ephesians 4:4-6
For there is one God, and one Mediatour betweene God and men, the man Christ Jesus,
Who gaue himselfe a ransome for all, to be testified in due time.
1 Timothy 2:5-6
What if I do not forgive? What happens then?
Several things:
Here is what I used to teach my children when they were young and beginning to discover that friendship is not always all fun. Sometimes they would get into little tussles and strike back or hold anger against others. So I said:
“If someone does something bad to you, it hurts. I know.
“But if you just do something back to them, it does not help you. You still hurt, and now they hurt, too. What good does that do?
“If you stay angry and then someone innocent comes along and you strike out at that person, you STILL hurt, and that new person hurts, too.
“You are trying to get rid of your hurt by giving hurt to someone else. But when you give it to someone else, it does not mean they can take it AWAY from you. They may take it, but they cannot take it AWAY. You leave them hurting, too, and they may try to get rid of their hurt by giving hurt to someone else, who also cannot take it away.
“It’s a little like the flu. I can give it to you, but then we both will have it. It just spreads.
“Only One person can take hurt AWAY, and that is God. If you give all your hurt to Him, He can take it away from you and make you feel much better.”
Now, maybe that was too simple for an adult, but it is true. It’s what He died for. Why not try Him out?
There sure are a lot of wrong theories and sayings about forgiveness out there, these days! Most people have heard them all, too many times. And although logic tells us something is wrong, we strain to forgive according to all we’ve heard, and cannot figure it out. Nothing seems to happen and several of our victimizers do not stay forgiven very long at all.
What!
To get a grasp on exactly what we are supposed to do, let’s first eliminate all wrong thinking upon which some people may be trying to convince us to act. For instance:
Denial
Forgiveness is NOT saying, “Oh, it’s okay.” When someone has done hurtful wrong against you, IT IS NOT OKAY! It should make us feel all rotten inside to say it is. Why? Because spreading wrongful hurt is not okay; it is sin. Sin is not okay with God; how could it be okay with us? Saying it is, is denial. It’s just plain ol’ living a lie.
Only say, “It’s okay,” when it was not sin, was not intended as sin, and was not received as sin. Only say, “It’s okay,” if you would be okay with it happening again.
Excuses
Forgiveness is NOT forgetting. How can anyone forget something on purpose! We have miraculous brains that function largely by memory. We do not have back-space keys for our brains. God can decide to forget something, if He wants, or cause us to forget something, but we do not have that kind of power.
Thinking we must forget, in order to prove we have forgiven, sets us up for making excuses. We say, “I’ll never be able to forgive that, because I could never forget such-and-such.” Or we think we have not forgiven because memories keep resurfacing, so it must be hopeless to try. What a wide-open door for excuses!
Folly
It is neither safe nor wise to trust someone who has proven himself to be untrustworthy. To send a youngster back to a bullying classroom or molesting teacher, to lend more money to someone who has not repaid, to tell a secret to a gossip, is just plain folly.
We must forgive those who sin against us, but we do NOT have to trust them again, in order to prove we have done so. We certainly do not have to feel guilty for helping put such a one in jail, if his sin was illegal.
Besides, trust, by its nature, must be earned, cannot be demanded.
So What IS Forgiveness?!
If we look up the word, “forgive,” we can find the original meanings of its ancient parts: to give far away.
Think: Where would you put all that pain, if you could download it? How far away would be far enough? The farthest possible distance from this existence is: in God’s hands. When He takes it, it’s gone.
Giving it to Him can feel like work, but it is forgiveness and is far less work than dealing with the current agony.
Now we have dealt with the why’s of suffering and forgiveness, and we have defined terms. Come on by tomorrow and get the HOW-TO and some FAQ’s.
See ya’.
Let’s lengthen yesterday’s list of sins against us:
rape,
lying,
breaking and entering,
laying-off.
Have I hit you yet?
What to do! Outside of calling the police, or suing, which can be legitimate actions, how do we finally get some peace about it?
Forgiveness.
And forgiveness is often the one thing we least understand and least want.
Like bad-tasting medicine.
I know.
Just like yesterday, the first reason is God.
1. God. God requires us to forgive. That is the best reason because when we are wounded and aching on the inside, we don’t understand much—but we don’t even have to think. We just know what He requires and prepare to go there.
He also promises to reward forgiveness with forgiveness, which should highly motivate the honest ones among us.
And like any good father, He teaches by example. He shows us how to do forgiveness, in the most radical way.
2. Man. Man wants and needs forgiveness. Who among us is innocent?
To keep God’s forgiveness, we must be forgiving. Since He has shown us His awesome power to forgive, how can we do less than try to imitate Him? That is His thinking.
Forgiveness also frees us to be able to hear God. Before we forgive, all we can hear from Him is how we ought to forgive. Once we are over that hurdle, He can show us more.
Lack of forgiveness binds us to the sinner we refuse to forgive. This is so scary. What it means is that when we refuse to forgive his sin against us, when we hug it up to ourselves and get it out and look at it every day, we start BEING like that sin.
Look at it this way: With a physical wound, if we treat it correctly, we can greatly minimize the scarring. But if we refuse to remove the dirt, refuse to medicate it, refuse a bandage, and continue picking at it, we make it worse. Bigger. Deeper. Uglier. Longer-lasting. More painful.
With a spiritual wound, we can even pass it down to our children…
3. Satan. Of course, he hates forgiveness, a real no-brainer, right?
The fun thing about this is when we obey God about forgiving, we SHUT THE DOOR TO HIS ENEMY. Oh, how I love this!
We all need to remember, though: when we disobey about forgiving, the reverse is also true.
Well, who is ready to know what on earth forgiveness really is?
Stop by tomorrow and grab Part 3. I promise you, it is WONDERFUL NEWS!
I only thought I had posted lines for this photo challenge, but after last night’s raging storm, I went out to check for damage, and found the loveliest sight:
As we can see, the busy hands have been busy, causing all sorts of lovely things to happen for us. In order, from left to right, these lines show:
Home's Cool! 