The Folly of Bitterness

I've just started reading a devotional called "Journey: A Woman's Guide to Intimacy With God", and its really very good :) Different women, prevalent in the church, or in Christian writing or music, write the devotions each day. This one, written by Chris Tiegreen, is based on the verse, "Forgive and you will be forgiven" Luke 6:37.

Its a verse I have had memorized since I was a kid, and yet, its a premise that is hard to adopt sometimes. There are people in my life who I seem to be at battle with more often than not... people that I do deeply love and care about. We misunderstand each other, lash out in our misunderstandings, and wind up hurting each other... and over the years, it becomes something harder and harder to forget. The "70x7" sometimes feels like its quickly coming to an end, and I wonder if I can ever truly let go or forget the pain from it to get back to the carefree open hearted type of relationship I have enjoyed with these people in the past. But God says I can. Not only that, but I should. And he says he'll help me. Here is an excerpt from the devotion today:

"Why do we hang on to bitterness the way we do? We nurse our resentments and cultivate them as though they are doing us a favor. We harbor grudges, often remembering offenses for years. We act as if our mental punishment of someone else somehow brings them to justice. But we decieve ourselves. Bitterness eats away at our lives, stealing our joy and eroding our sense of peace, while never - not once - hurting the one we resent.

This is such a pitiful human tendency, and yet we have all done it. We let offenses - large and small, real and imagined - rob us of the joy God means for us to have. How can we possibly understand God's forgiveness this way? When we focus on judgment and justice toward others, can we ever understand God's mercy toward us? Do we really imagine that those who have sinned against us have sinned greatly, while our offenses against God are minor and easy for Him to overlook? If so, we have it backward. Our sins against God, no matter how small, are offenses against the eternal, infinite, Being. They therefore erquired an eternal, infinite sacrifice. Offenses against us pale in comparison.

Jesus' parable of the man who owed the king the rediculously large amount of 10,000 talents (Matthew 18:23-35) should hit home. He was forgiven his huge debt, only to go out and hold minor accounts against his debtors. His story is our story, at least until we learn better. We underestimate the offense of our sins against God and overestimate the offenses of others against us.

Far from being a legal prerequisite for our own forgiveness, Jesus' command to forgive others prepares us to understand the gospel. The God of extravagent mercy asks us only to get a glimpse of God's mercy by forgiving them."

Even in just my first few devotions, I know that there are a lot of things that God can work to change for the better in me. My prayer is that he would help me identify them, and then help me work to change them as the time goes on.