70 x 7

Seventy Times Seven, Susan Savage, 2007. 18 x 24 in., Oil on canvas. Private collection.

“Forgive.” Spoken word sermon excerpt by Billy Graham.

Poetry:

“Forgiveness”
by Debra Allbery

Where you are the temperature plummets
at night, and you sleep in the open
and just gravity holds you. The dry riverbeds
are both penance and reward. I know you’ve walked
miles now, and you’ve scattered the last of me
into the pines and box canyons and dust,
into whatever the wind carries and loses,
into a country whose language I don’t speak.
So the thoughts you send me now become gestures,
hands pocketed and unpocketed before you move on,
and in my dreams you take on a terrible solidity.
You wear that guilt-laced anger I’ve seen men mask—
like an old lover who whispered through his embrace,
Omit me from what you have written.You I omit,
the way an artist draws with an eraser,
absence taking tangible shape from the darkness.
Whether each of us has exiled within ourselves a memory
we can trust to find its way, or one crippled with lies,
we’re learning that the fugitive past can cover
its tracks, but not erase them; that out of love
and grief, it takes the shape of our shadows,
crouches by trash cans in the mind’s back alleys,
surviving on what we refuse. Look above it, instead,
and say that in time the unreconciled settles into place
like a renegade star in some guiding constellation,
and that our altered courses remain the correct ones.
That’s what I tell myself in these northern woods.
I call your abandonment grace and believe in it
even more than you. That I might finally move
through this meanwhile and find a place to live.

70 x 7

For the past twenty-nine years, my wife and I have spoken at FamilyLife marriage conferences. While the conference covers many topics like a theology of marriage, threats to marital oneness, effective communication, reality of spiritual battle, and cultivating sexual intimacy, there is one topic that many—including us as speakers—find the most challenging: forgiveness.

What makes this topic so difficult is an answer given by Jesus concerning the scope of forgiveness. Peter asks Jesus how many times we should forgive? He frames his question by offering an answer many Jews of his day would have thought unreasonable. Religious leaders taught that a sin against you might be forgiven three times, but a fourth was not required. Peter offers “up to seven” as an answer to his own question. Jesus shocks listeners by rejecting Peter’s generous number and states, “not seven, but seventy-seven times” (Mt. 18:21-22). To be clear, Jesus isn’t suggesting a numerical limit, but rather, no limit.

Jesus’s radical approach to forgiveness is not only for married couples, but for all Christ followers! Yet, what does Jesus mean by forgiveness? And, how do we accomplish it when we are deeply hurt? For an answer, we’ll have to consult both specific (the Scriptures) and general (clues given by Christian thinkers) revelation.

Defining Forgiveness

While there are many detailed definitions of forgiveness, I’ll offer a thin slice of what it means to forgive. We forgive another when we let go of the anger, resentment, blame and other toxic feelings we have toward the offender. Of course, forgiveness should entail both parties coming together to clear the air, talk about grievances and reach a mutual understanding of what needs to be forgiven and what constitutes forgiveness. However, a key part of forgiveness is what happens in the spirit of the offended after the transgression happens. Note that this definition of forgiveness does not necessarily mean we return to fellowship with the person who hurt us. There is a difference between forgiveness and reconciliation. We can forgive a person, but equally choose to remove ourselves from a toxic relationship. The former is a command, the latter discernment.

Stages of Forgiving

Lewis Smedes in his book,The Art of Forgiving, states that all individuals intent on forgiving must move through three internal stages. First, to forgive you must rediscover the humanity of the person who hurt you. The person who hurt us must move from being a monster to a “person who shares our faulty humanity, bruised like us, faulty like us, still thoroughly blamable for what he did to us. Yet, human like us.” Second, you must surrender your right to get even. Smedes vividly compares the fantasy of getting even with the person who wronged you to an intravenous drip stuck into your veins pushing spiritual poison into your system. Third, you revise your feelings toward the person who hurt you. The surest way to know that you have forgiven a person is to pray for them and their relationship with God.

Benefits of Forgiveness and Dangers of Not Forgiving

Why would Jesus be so firm in not putting a limit on forgiveness? Perhaps, he understands how our choice to forgive, or hang onto bitterness, will deeply impact our own flourishing.

Everett Worthington, director of the Campaign for Forgiveness Research, argues that negative emotions associated with unresolved conflict and an unforgiving attitude compromise our immune system. Worthington and his research team have sought to help among others, mothers in Northern Ireland who have lost children to religious violence. His studies show that women who forgive these perpetrators of injustice report a reduction in symptoms of stress including severe headaches, backaches, and the release of negative emotions. Conversely, our refusal to forgive comes at great mental, physical, and spiritual cost. Could it be the physical aches and pains we experience on a regular basis are residue of our refusal to forgive?

Christian thinker and author, Henri Nouwen, believed forgiveness opens a door to not only loving others, but God. “Forgiveness stands in the center of God’s love for us and also in the center of our love for each other. Loving one another means forgiving one another over and over again.”

Prayer:
Lord, this day let us think deeply about how you’ve forgiven us of all our sins—past, present, and future. Let us apply the Scripture’s command to “forgive one another just as God in Christ” forgave us (Eph. 4:32). We confess forgiving people who have hurt us is hard—at times, seemingly impossible—but you ask us to do so for our own good.
Amen

Dr. Tim Muehlhoff
Professor of Communication
Co-director of the Winsome Conviction Project
Biola University

For more information about the artwork, music, and poetry selected for this day, please visit our website via the link in our bio.