February 20, 2012
Timing is Everything
Recently a fellow believer came to me asking for forgiveness for a
situation that happened more than a year ago. She confessed to not only
harboring resentment, but to also spreading malicious gossip and maligning my
reputation. I gave her my forgiveness, however she just wouldn’t let it go. She
continued to talk and rehashed the situation until the forgiveness was
overshadowed by justification for her actions. Although we parted company with
prayer, I couldn’t help but notice that the timing of her request coincided
with the current political landscape. Jesus said, “Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there
remember that your brother has something against you, leave your
gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother;
then come and offer your gift.” (Matt 5:23-24 NIV) I think I’ve just
discovered another reason for us to reconcile with one another quickly…so that
there is never any question of motives.
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----God is the ultimate of anything He asks us to be. We can’t even completely be what He asks of us. So He is gracious towards our shortfall if we are sincere about desiring to be completely right. There are many reasons why we may never carry a desire into the reality of an action, but sincerity is rarely one of them. So, where the physical, mental, and emotional means exist for carrying a desire into action, the lack of such actions becomes quite telling about the probable lack of sincere desire. The person carries his gift to the altar desiring to behave in some way more like the God of the altar, or at least desiring to maintain a relationship with Him. When he remembers something he did to offend someone else, is he going to confirm his sincerity of desiring to be more godly by doing what God counts as the more godly thing of fixing the damage he made to the relationship? Or is he going to perform the excuse of just worshipping the God he more sincerely does not see fit to be like?
-----A sincerity problem is not always the reason apologies do not get made immediately. Sometimes there is an intelligence problem - someone just isn’t smart enough to know that they’ve offended another. Sometimes there’s a proximity problem. Maybe now that someone has realized they’ve offended, they don’t know where to reach or can not reach the offended party to make amends. I believe there are emotional and mental problems that prevent a person from doing things he sincerely desires to do. None of us is mentally healthy from our mind’s head to it toes. In fact, and I don’t mean this cynically or derogatorily, I believe that we are all quite mentally ill compared to what mental health will be in God’s blissfully perfect place of loving peace and joy. I believe we often are very sincere about desiring to do many things, but we just can’t quite get them worked through all the cold clutches of our ill mental health so they can be enacted. And I believe God’s consideration of this is much of what His mercy is about.
-----But His mercy is not about our using any real conditions as excuses to cover up the real reason for not acting: lack of caring; insincerity; or worse, morbidly acting into the plans of a dastardly, undisclosed plot. His mercy will cover wherever we fail as long as we are sincere. But when we are sincere, sooner or later we begin to notice that the simple initiating of a desire into the beginning of action will itself make available another doable step, and so forth, until the action is at least more or less complete in a reasonably acceptable form. That makes the site of the ultimate relationship we can have with God in our temporal lives a bit unnerving, seeing the ones we are really having.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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