A FTER A LONG SHIFT AT THE FIRE DEPARTMENT, Matt Swatzell fell asleep while driving and crashed into another vehicle, taking the life of pregnant mother June Fitzgerald and injuring her 19-month-old daughter. According to Today, Fitzgerald’s husband, a full-time pastor, asked for the man’s diminished sentence — and began meeting with Swatzell for coffee and conversation. Many years later, the two men remain close. “You forgive as you’ve been forgiven,” Fitzgerald told Today.
MARY JOHNSON LOST HER TEENAGE SON IN 1993 after Oshea Israel got into a fight with him at a party, and shot him. With so much unanswered, Johnson went to visit Oshea in jail. After their first contact, Mary says, “I began to feel this movement in my feet, moved up my legs, and it just moved up my body. When I felt it leave me, I instantly knew that all that anger and hatred and animosity I had in my heart for [him] for 12 years was over. I had totally forgiven [him].” The two now live as neighbors in the same duplex, and Johnson has even referred to Israel as “son” in interviews. “I admire you for your being brave enough to offer forgiveness, and for being brave enough to take that step,” Israel told The Daily Beast. “It motivates me to make sure that I stay on the right path.”
—These stories come from www.rd.com/true-sto…/inspiring/inspiring-forgiveness-stories
† † †
JENN BENDER WRITES THAT SHE WAS 11 when her grandmother began teaching her to hate her body. Her grandma called Jenn fat. In high school, she’d call her grandma after school for the daily dose of abuse. It was not until college that something clicked and Jenn realized the grandmother was abusing her
Her grandma taught Jenn to hate her body, to be mean to herself, to tear herself down, to blame herself first for whatever happened in life. One year on Jenn’s birthday, the grandmother gave her a huge can of SlimFast. It was expired and she had ripped the UPC code out to get the rebate. Jenn writes, “That was my value — a big, old can of expired SlimFast.”
During one therapy session, the therapist asked, “How big is your anger toward your grandma?” Without hesitation, “It’s as big as my house.” The therapist suggested Jenn build the house. So Jenn collected art supplies: foam board, dowel rods, butcher paper; and built a house of anger. There was a screaming papier-mâché mouth for inside the house. The floor was lined with pictures of SlimFast.
When the house was complete and she was ready to release her anger, Jenn built a small altar of bricks in her back yard. She placed her anger house on top of the bricks and then lit it on fire. She said, “As the house was consumed by flames, my anger was released through the rising smoke.”
By releasing her anger, grandmother no longer had any control over Jenn. She felt lighter, happier than she had ever been. Not long after, the grandmother was diagnosed with a terminal illness. Jenn writes: “I knew that I had truly forgiven her, when, in that moment of her pain and fear, I was able to give her comfort.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…/forgiving-my-grandmother_b_…
† † †
THE BIBLE REMINDS US REPEATEDLY that we are to forgive those who have injured us. We know that. It’s ingrained in our minds from the Lord’s Prayer — “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” We also know we should forgive.
There is something valuable in letting go of hurts. Forgiveness can lead to healing of emotional and physical illness. But we also know that it’s just about impossible to do. We marvel as such stories. That’s why they are printed under titles like “Extreme Forgiveness.”
Peter seeks praise from Jesus for being willing to forgive someone seven times. Based on Jewish tradition and teaching that’s very generous. Forgive the first, forgive the second forgive the third time someone transgresses. But if a person transgresses a fourth time, do not forgive. Peter goes beyond the teaching. Generous grace. But it is not a pat on the back that Peter receives from Jesus but a lesson in the measure of extreme grace.
† † †
TO REINFORCE THE LESSON, JESUS TELLS this parable. Note the amazing exaggeration. The servant owes ten thousand talents to the king. Jesus is using a number that has no realistic present-day equivalency. Further, no king would loan an incalculably large amount to a servant. But, that is what this king is willing to loan and to forgive. When the servant then fails to forgive another for a remarkably small debt, his forgiveness is withdrawn and the king has him thrown into jail.
Again, exaggeration seems to be the way Jesus makes his point here. He is using hyperbolic language to teach Peter and to teach us about the true nature of forgiveness.
But, there is a great irony in this. Peter heard hyperbole in Jesus’ answers, but, he could not know that ultimately, this was the size of debt Jesus would soon forgive. All the sins of all believers in all the world through all of time. An unbelievably large debt. This is the way to conceive of the debt of ten thousand talents owed the king. There is no way that Peter, the one who tried to stop Jesus from facing sure crucifixion in Jerusalem, could foresee that this was the debt Jesus was to pay on the cross.
The King of creation would pay with his life, so that the incalculable debt would be erased. Peter ultimately came to see this and preached this message to the church founded upon his leadership.
† † †
FORGIVE WITHOUT CALCULATION OR RESERVATION. Of course, this is not easy to do. Each failure to do so is another talent piled onto the sin-bearing cross. The life of discipleship is a balance: We do not pile up our debt simply because we know it will be forgiven; we love and offer forgiveness even when we feel unable because the forgiving king loves through us. Failing to do so is to challenge the king to reverse his grace and substitute the judgment we deserve.
http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx…
— Keith Cardwell
