Family, Faith & Forgiveness A GOODBYE, CHRISTOPHER ROBIN PlanSample

 Day 4 - Family is About Forgiveness

Forgiveness is hard. That could be true for the simple reason that in order to be in a position to forgive somebody, that somebody has to have done something hurtful to us. But forgiveness, biblically defined, is about more than simply letting go of our hurt - it is about taking the sins of another on ourselves.

That's what Jesus did at Calvary. He who was without sin bore the sins of the world -past, present and future - through His horrific death on the Cross. This ultimate act of selflessness and sacrifice not only made a way for us to become part of God's family, it gives us a beautiful picture of how we are to forgive those whose sins have injured us. That's the essence of today's Scripture.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. did a lot of forgiving in his life. As his generation's foremost civil rights leader, he was reviled and mistreated by many; as a pastor, he also knew better than most the importance of forgiveness to his "dream" of an America that focused more on the content of a man's character than the color of his skin.

"We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive,"King said in a 1957 sermon. "He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies."

The Milne family of GOODBYE CHRISTOPHER ROBIN did its fair share of doling out emotional hurts to one another. It is only through applying the brilliance of Dr. King's words, four decades before he wrote them, that they were able to forgive one another for the unintended wounds they caused and live a truly thriving life as a family.