490+

John Colligan, of New York, was in a hurry to return to his basement office when his attention was grabbed by a letter lying on the kitchen table. It was from the Colorado District Attorney.

His 21-year old son, Johnny, had moved to Colorado 6 months earlier, and 9 weeks after moving there was shot to death.

Please follow the link at the end of the following paragraph for the complete story.

The courts would decide the sentence. That was their responsibility. Mine was to offer the forgiveness I had finally allowed God to place in me. A great weight lifted. It was time to get on with life. (http://www.guideposts.com/print/11517, May 1994)

Out of all life’s challenging issues,
• forgiveness is one that lingers in society’s shadow.
• misunderstood and seldom given any value, this issue seems more unpopular than ever.
• Forgiveness for many is like an old book layered with dust and rarely explored.
• Sure, people know it exists, but they believe that its importance is outdated to say the least.
• In a world where
o personal vengeance is heroic and
o utter hatred is showcased on TV talk shows,
• to forgive seems a bit weak.
o Whether in the locker room or the ladies room,
o stories of payback and revenge have been deemed much more entertaining then those of forgiveness and reconciliation.
o From the media to our homes, getting even or “settling the score” are what people use to resolve their inner conflict. http://www.inspiredchristian.org/cyber/07/080107jr.html

Forgiveness does NOT mean that there are no consequences!
• As John said, the sentence was up to the courts, that was their business.
• Revenge is the business of the universe. The offender is punished by their offense, here and now. Despite appearances, they receive the consequences. Can we make the distinction in our minds between forgiveness and actions that have consequences?
• When we attempt to humiliate or embarrass someone who has offended us, by our behavior, or indeed by our thoughts we are actively bringing the past into the present and giving it life.
Forgiveness does not mean that you are going to deliberately put yourself in a position to be abused and trod upon again.
• Forgiveness does not mean that you and your offender will be best friends.
• When I forgive someone, it means that I will not allow their actions to affect me in any negative way.
• I will not permit my mind body or spirit to be robbed of "good "by the "bad "behavior of someone else.
• It is not what happens to me that counts so much as what happens in me.
Psalms 130: 3-4 3 If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities, LORD, who could stand? 4 But there is forgiveness with you,
John 8:6-8 6 . . . Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. 7When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” 8And once again he bent down and wrote on the ground. 9 When they heard it, they went away, one by one.

• If God should mark iniquities, mistakes, who could stand?
• If anyone has never made a mistake, let that one throw a stone

This leaves condemnation in the hands of God. In the case of the young woman who shot Johnny, consequences were in the hands of the court.
In our everyday world
• We all live with a sense of separation, aloneness, alienation and guilt.
• Psychology places the need to belong one step above the need to survive.
• This sense of separation and aloneness may be the force behind the drive to discover or make meaning in life.
• Every religious tradition recognizes this and has some way of addressing it.
Ours is a balancing act of being connected enough to belong and independent enough to think for ourselves. If we go too far either way, we risk reducing the meaning of life and perhaps to making it meaningless.
If in being connected, I give people the power to offend me in any way, I have given them too much power over my life.
It is essential that I maintain enough autonomy to live my choices, not those subtly or forcefully imposed by those to whom I am connected.
• Freedom to live life to the fullest is a God-given right for all of us.
• Freedom of that magnitude can only be realized when we learn to forgive the offenders and offenses that come our way.
Lynne Twist, author of The Soul of Money, is a global activist and fundraiser. She tells of her experience in Senegal, a small coastal country on the farthest western tip of the African continent. 18 people of the Hunger Project led by Swift were there to meet with people of a village that lay several hours into the desert. The Hunger Project is about empowering people to end their own hunger, and this meeting was about their need to find a new source of water. These were a proud people who knew nothing but life in the Sahel Desert. They also knew they could not continue without some change in the water situation.
The people were Muslim, and as they sat in a circle, the men did all the talking. The women sat in a second circle where they could see and hear, but not speak. The barrenness of the land made a solution seem impossible, but the attitude, sense of resiliency, and the dignity of these people argued differently (72).
Swift asked to meet with the women. She had felt their power, and even though it was a strange request in this Muslim culture, it was allowed. The women quickly conveyed that they had visions of an underground lake beneath the area. They felt it; they knew it was there. They needed the help of the project workers to get permission from the men to dig a well deep enough to reach the water. The men had not permitted this as they did not believe the water was there. Also they did not want women doing this kind of work. In their tradition, only certain kinds of labor were allowed for the women. All these women needed was permission from the men to pursue their clear instinct. That was the help they needed from an outside source. Swift said, “It was baking hot. There were thousands of flies. I had silt in my mouth and lungs. It was about as uncomfortable a place as you can imagine being in, and yet I remember that I did not feel any thirst or discomfort – only the presence of possibility amidst these bold and beautiful women.
After many conversations with both the women and the men, it was agreed with the mullahs and the chief to start work with the women because the women had the vision. Over the next year the women dug both with hand tools and the simple equipment brought by the Hunger Project. As they dug they sang, drummed, and cared for each other’s children as they worked, never doubting that the water was there. And it was! In the years since, the men and women have built a pumping station and water tower for storage. Seventeen villages now have water, and the women’s leadership groups are the center of action. There is irrigation, chicken farming, literacy classes and batiking businesses. People are flourishing, contributing members of their country. The tribe is proud that it was their own people, their own work, and the land they lived on that proved to be the key to their own prosperity.
These Senegalese people came together in community with dignity and freedom. Surely there were offenses given among them; perhaps feelings related to the women having the vision and the culture that did not allow them to act on that vision. Yet they had the freedom of thought to seek outside help. They had the freedom of dignity to seek their own solution and to put it into practice. They did not need rescuing. They were getting on with life.
FORGIVENESS--A process of giving up the false for the true; erasing . . . error from the mind and body. It is closely related to repentance, which is a turning from belief in error to belief in God and righteousness.
Forgiveness is only established through renewing the mind and body with thoughts and words of Truth (RW 78).
Forgiveness really means the giving up of something. When you forgive yourself, you cease doing the things that you should not do.
It is through forgiveness that true spiritual healing is accomplished. Forgiveness removes the errors of the mind, and bodily harmony results in consonance [agreement] with divine law (Fillmore, RW 79).
Today’s lesson title comes from Matt. 18:22, when Jesus told Peter that he must forgive 70 times 7. I used different scripture hoping to move into the subject with fewer preconceived notions on your part. 70 X 7 is 490. The plus is the added value of richness in life that forgiveness brings.
In talking about forgiveness we often think of:
• Weakness
• Approving of the wrong
• Allowing the wrong to continue without consequences.
The Aramaic transation of 70 X 7 stretches more to read “up to 70X77 = 5390. In reality, Jesus used a hyperbole, purposely overstating the idea. What Jesus really meant was that it goes on and on and on until, like water, it has worn away the stones of bitterness and the perception of injury. It goes on and on to infinity.
So, I ask you to consider
• How would your life be different if you could forgive that person who hurt you, even if he or she never asked for forgiveness?
• Who would you be without the story about having been wronged?
• What will your life be if you continue to wait for an apology or some form of justice?
• As impossible as it may seem, when we turn within and quiet our minds from that endless chatter, from retelling the story endlessly, from telling ourselves what ought to happen, when we quiet our minds, we can hear that gentle voice telling us how we can do what looks impossible.
• Can you think of a person who changed his life and now has an effective ministry of healing?
o If not, consider looking up Charles Colson. //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Colson
o Colson was known as the White House "hatchet man," a man feared by even the most powerful politicos during his four years of service to President Nixon.
o He was thought of as one of the “Watergate 7” although he pleased guilty of obstruction of justice in the Daniel Ellsberg Case
o When news of Colson's conversion to Christianity leaked to the press in 1973, the Boston Globe reported, "If Mr. Colson can repent of his sins, there just has to be hope for everybody."
o In 1974 Colson entered prison.
o In 1976, Colson founded Prison Fellowship, which has become the world's largest outreach to prisoners, ex-prisoners, crime victims, and their families.
o Colson has built a movement working with more than 40,000 prison ministry volunteers, with ministries in more than 100 countries. And that is just the beginning.
o He has since written more than 30 books,
 established Justice Fellowship (a faith-based criminal justice reform group),
 introduced Angel Tree (a program that provides Christmas gifts to ½ million children of inmates annually on behalf of their incarcerated parent)
 established Prison Fellowship International which now includes national chapters in 113 countries
And the list goes on.
Who would we be without our story of being wronged?
Who would we be if we gave up waiting for justice, and embraced forgiveness and reconciliation?
Forgive and move on with living.
Forgiving someone doesn’t mean s/he is right. It means you are free.

God loves you, and so do I
Martha