March 11, 2025
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Forgive
If you forgive men their transgressions, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you do not forgive men, neither will your Father forgive you.”
Last week there were several moments when my grandson took offense at something I said or did and acted out his anger. We didn’t talk for awhile, and then as if by magic, he was over it. Nothing we did or said made that happen. I know inside myself I struggled to forgive him … and then I did. Perhaps inside himself he struggled to forgive me … and then he did. But we didn’t share our inner stories with each other.
I think when that happens between adults, it’s important to speak the forgiveness we experience inside. On the other hand, when the forgiveness is one-sided or incomplete, bringing it up again might just reignite the flame. No wonder pushing old arguments under the rug often seems like the best way to move forward.
But the cauldron simmers. The smallest thing can make it boil over. Ever so quick. What then?
When the poor one called out, the Lord heard, and from his distress he saved him.
It’s so hard to invite God into a conflict when I’m sure I’m right. Why should I? And when you’re also sure you’re right, then why should we? The trouble is that in our self-imposed darkness, we can’t see straight. We make things up since we don’t see clearly.
Look to him that you may be radiant with joy, and your faces may not blush with shame.
I’m surprised at what becomes visible when God’s light shines in. Be thou my vision is not just a great song, but the only way to live.
I sought the Lord and he answered me. He delivered me from all my fears. The Lord has eyes for the just, and ears for their cry. The Lord is close to the brokenhearted, and those who are crushed in spirit he saves.
In fact when God listens, I find myself listening to him. When I listen to him, that’s when my fears fall away, when my broken heart is repaired, when my crushed spirit is saved. God speaks with more than words. He gave me five senses, and he uses them all to communicate with me, especially when at first I don’t even want to listen.
Just give it a little more time.
Just as from the heavens the rain and snow come down and do not return till they have watered the earth, so shall my word be. It shall do my will and achieve the end for which I sent it.
Dad and my brother John farmed all their lives. They know the ways of the weather, which sometimes frustrated them and even seemed to break them for a time. Isaiah 55 brought them back from the world they wanted to control to the world God gave them, in all its splendor, with the cattle on a thousand hills.
And this is just as true for the words I discern coming from God when, at last, in the midst of being caught up in my own darn self, God’s touch, his words, his taste, his smell, and the visions he gives me break in and break through. Then peace, like a river, attendeth my way. Then it is well, it is well with my soul.
(Isaiah 55, Psalm 34, Matthew 4, Matthew 6)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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