Simple Gifts
‘Tis a gift to be simple, ‘tis a gift to be free.
‘Tis a gift to come round where you ought to be.
And when you find yourself in a place just right
‘Twill be in the land of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gained,
To bow and to bend we shall not be ashamed.
To turn and turn will be our delight,
Until turning, turning, we come round right.
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!
Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made.
–Robert Browning
Young men think old men are fools; but old men know young men are fools.
–George Chapman
For as I like a young man in whom there is something of the old, so I like an old man in whom there is something of the young.
–Cicero
Forty is the old age of youth; fifty is the youth of old age.
–Victor Hugo
Whenever a man’s friends begin to compliment him about looking young, he may be sure that they think he is growing old.
–Washington Irving
Before old age my care was to live well; in old age, to die well.
–Seneca
Nobody loves life like an old man.
–Sophocles
My great-grandmother, Grismamma, was a petite woman who spoke no English. She made the enormous, and I am sure, frightening, sacrifice of coming over here, to America, and leaving all behind in southern Germany. Her real name was Wilhelmina Carolina Anna Adelheidt Wieckert. And that was BEFORE she married. As small children, we had her long name memorized.
When I knew her, she was old as old can be, and I was barely over four years. She lived with her daughter, my grandmother, “Laura” and we saw her every time we went there. I never saw her walk. She had to be helped with everything. We were not allowed to speak to her, except to tell her “Good-night.” I guess she knew that much English. We also had to be quiet and polite around Grismamma.
One amazing thing about Grismamma, is that she had hair long enough to reach the floor. Yet her hair was so thin, she kept it all, all in a bun about the size of a golf ball..
I think she died when I was about four. I did not attend the funeral. Probably I was too young.
I have one thing that used to belong to Grismamma. It is a small, orange sherbet glass with a wax orange in it:
Grismamma received this glass or cup as a gift when she was 13, and kept it safe for the rest of her long life. When she died, my mom got the cup and kept it safe for her whole life. Now it is mine. It lives in a little box in the top cabinets in my kitchen.
I think it is old.
But I want it to become even older. I want the memory of my Grismamma to go on and on, until time comes to an end, because she was mine and was ours. I want someone far in the future to be able to touch the precious thing my Grismamma touched and know someone else was here, once, and then went on, someone who sacrificed to make something better for those who were to come.
And to be thankful.
I want my children and their descendents to know I valued someone small and frail, who borrowed the air we now borrow, and then gave it back.
As we someday must.
Question: When is a person not a person?
Answer: When he is a child.
Ladies, just think: You are one day post-partum and your doctor tells you that you may take your baby home if you want. But the nurse doesn’t want you to, so she calls the police. In an unheard-of tug of war, Dear Mommy, weary from labor and drained from lack of sleep, this nightmare unfolds before your eyes, in the land of the free.
And as sorry as you may feel for yourself, you cannot escape the fact that your precious new daughter is a mere pawn in a manipulator’s reach.
Read about it here.
And as sad as that may make us feel, should your child ever feel sadness, herself, better be prepared for another attack.
But don’t you DARE die!
If your precious daugher ever loses her parents and must be placed in foster or adoptive care, the State could place her in a home with two mommies or even with two daddies because it might hurt their feelings if the State did otherwise.
And this is no matter what the voters think.
Read about it here.
Oh, protect the children!
And pray…
Home's Cool! 