I am almost afraid to do this post. It is possible that when checking in that I might scare you away! If we thought that authentic intimacy and trust were difficult, I believe they can not hold much of a candle to our topic tomorrow, real forgiveness. As many of you have heard me say, the church is full of regular people. And regular people are imperfect and likely to hurt your feelings. If your feelings have not been hurt yet in the church it is possible that you haven't been paying attention.
What makes church special is not that we avoid the imperfections of human relations, but that through Christ we strive to face our slip ups, confess them, and actively work on doing something about it. (That is repentance - an action word, not a thoughtful word) Forgiveness, we will discover, is a choice we make. Like our other concepts thus far, we need to choose to forgive. The way we chose intimacy and we chose trust. We will need to forgive even when we don't "feel like it." I would imagine that mostly, we won't feel like it. I want to share the definition for forgiveness with you, again this definition I am borrowing from the 252 basics curriculum. Mull this one over and let me know what you think. Forgiveness - deciding that someone who has wronged you doesn't have to pay.
The parable of the prodigal son is our text for tomorrow, and I know that many of us may have preconceived feelings about the characters in that story. Let's try to wash those away and look at the scene through fresh eyes. Jesus was the best story-teller ever. His tales were never just one layer thick. Let's get ready to dig in together. :)
See you tomorrow.
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