Where Is God in This?Sýnishorn

When someone wrongs us, we feel like they owe us something. Think about it. Your friends don’t invite you to the girls’ night out? You feel they owe you a better friendship. Does your spouse spend too much time on the golf course? You feel they owe you more time. That’s what it comes down to: we didn’t get what we want, so we’re owed what we want.

Don’t get me wrong. Not all anger and hurt feelings are trivial. People can wound us. I’ve hurt more in the last year than I can ever remember hurting before. And sometimes, they really do owe us better, more, different. It’s OK to feel angry, mad, indignant rage. But it’s not OK to hang on to it.

But we do! And I think we hang on to unforgiveness out of fear.

Over time, unforgiveness causes us more suffering than just about any other source of suffering we go through. Unforgiveness leaves us feeling anxious, isolated, and restless. Unforgiveness can even make us physically sick

God doesn’t say, “Thou shalt be nice to everyone!” He doesn’t even say we have to like everyone. Instead, his commandment is simply to love your neighbor as yourself. Love, in this instance, means releasing them from the “debt” you believe they owe you.

Ephesians 4:32 says, “Forgive one another, just as God forgave you because of what Christ has done.” God has forgiven us for more than we’re even aware of. The kind of grace he offers us doesn’t compute because we’re not capable of it. Because he really does forgive and forget. He doesn’t need a relational distance from us. In fact, some of my most intimate moments with God have been after repentance. No, we can’t forgive as God can. But we do have the opportunity to express our deep gratitude to him by offering forgiveness to his people.

I’m willing to bet that if the honest-­to-­goodness peace of God were available for purchase at Target on Black Friday, we’d be sliding our carts around the aisles on two wheels. But we don’t have to purchase the peace of God. Jesus already did that. Don’t allow the struggle of fear—­the fear of sharks, the fear of the unknown, the fear of forgiveness—­to steal your potential for peace.

It’s a peace Jesus purposefully traded his life to give us.

God, help me choose to forgive others today.