Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.”

• Mark 11:25

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

• John 13:34-35

“ ‘It is nothing,’ I said a little smugly. ‘It is all forgiven.’
“ ‘By you, yes,’ he said. ‘But what about them? Have they accepted your forgiveness?’
“ ‘They say there is nothing to forgive! They deny it ever happened. No matter what they say, though, I can prove they were wrong.’ I went eagerly to my desk. ‘See, I have it in black and white! I saved all their letters and I can show you where …’
“ ‘Corrie!’ My friend slipped his arm through mine and gently closed the drawer. ‘Aren’t you the one whose sins are at the bottom of the sea? Yet are the sins of your friends etched in black and white?’
“For an astonishing moment I could not find my voice. ‘Lord Jesus,’ I whispered at last, ‘who takes all my sins away, forgive me for preserving all these years the evidence against others! Give me grace to burn all the blacks and whites as a sweet-smelling sacrifice to Your glory.’ ”

• Corrie ten Boom, Tramp for the Lord

Corrie ten Boom precedes this conversation with an African friend who had come to call on her.  She said that it was odd that she had been able to forgive prison guards at the concentration camp where her sister died, and she was mistreated.  But when Christians, no, Christian friends attack you, that was something quite different.

Even then, she asked for forgiveness, and they said they had done nothing wrong, there was nothing to forgive.

Jesus says that we must forgive so that our Father in Heaven can forgive us.  I heard a pastor once who got tied up in knots trying to explain how we must confess every sin.  His friends, other pastors, talked about how they had hurt someone else’s feelings, but it was an innocent remark.  The other person said nothing.  When you do not even know that you sinned, how can you confess that one?

God has forgiven all our sins, but we must be in a state of humility for those sins that we did not consciously make.  We live in a fallen world, and it is hard to walk on eggshells, constantly afraid of the next blunder that we make, often not knowing we made it.  C.S. Lewis talked about the sins that really hurt his friends were the unintentional ones, the ones he did not know that he did.  In contrast, when he was either feeling impish or a little hurt himself, he would lash out on purpose and his friends laughed it off.

I bring C.S. Lewis up because there are books, plural, of his letters to other people.  They had kept his letters and sent them back to the secretary for C.S. Lewis and they were placed in books after Lewis’ death.

We often keep letters to remember people and the kind words that they said to us or about us.  Having friends like that is rare, and remembering them by their own words is a good thing to do.

But keeping the admonishments?  If the admonishment is legitimate, why not?  You should not feel that you have to forgive someone for pointing out a fault.  That makes you better.  In that case, there is legitimately no reason to forgive that person.

But keeping a rant because they did not like you or what you write or how you dress yourself or your funny laugh?

I recently had an email that stated that I should never write again, but they said nothing about what I said that was wrong.  I thought about printing and framing the email.  I wanted a reminder to pray each time I write something and post it.  But after rereading this chapter in Tante Corrie’s book, with two chapters left, I went back to my inbox and deleted the nasty email.  Tante Corrie burned hers, but if I had printed it, I would have run it through the shredder.

Actually, I do pray with each post.  My late wife was my shin kicker, often kicking my shin in Sunday school when I got off topic.  A few times, she would tell me that I should not post something that I wrote.  Other times, she told me to rewrite it so that the person I was writing about could not recognize it was about them.  With her gone, I have only God to tap me on the shoulder to say, “You got it off your chest.  Now delete it and never think about it again.”

My theology may be different than yours, but if you love Jesus as I do, then why keep a reminder of something unfortunate that was uttered, even by email?  Let us love one another instead.

Lord, strengthen me.  Help us to forget wrongs done to us.  Even if the wrong was repetitive and we moved away just to prevent the continued onslaught, help us to forget the hurt.  If there were corrections meant and done in a bad way, help us remember to do right, but we can release and forget the hurt.  In Your name I pray.  Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.