Sunday School at 9 am | worship at 10 am

Goldfish, Porcupines and Forgiveness

A young boy by the name of Timmy was in the garden filling in a hole when his neighbor looked over the fence and asked him what he was doing. "My goldfish died," Timmy replied tearfully, "and I've just buried him." The neighbor was concerned. "That's an awfully big hole for a goldfish, isn't it?" Timmy carefully patted down the last heap of earth and then said, "That's because he's inside your cat."

Ah, revenge, how sweet it is. How just and right. For when we've been wronged, there is a debt, and someone must pay.

Revenge is a natural response to being wronged. Yet as Christians we are called to a new kind of response…a response called forgiveness… a response modeled by our Lord Jesus Christ and required of his followers.

Forgive us our sins, we pray, as we forgive those who sin against us. As we forgive.

In the Lord's Prayer, as well as in the story we read, it is clear that our being forgiven is tied closely with our forgiveness of others. If indeed we have received the forgiveness of Christ, we must extend forgiveness to others.

But, it’s not easy, is it? Forgiving seems almost unnatural. Our sense of fairness tells us people should pay for the wrong they do. That seems only natural. But forgiving transcends the natural. This coming Sunday we’re going to explore this power that can transcend the natural—the power of forgiveness.

Sooner or later, all of us are going to need this supernatural phenomenon called forgiveness. Anytime someone hurts you, it creates a crisis. Someone else damaged you or your property, but you are left holding the bag of hurt. It’s not fair, but it’s real. You are faced with the question of what to do
with the pain.

The German philosopher Schopenhauer compared the human race to a bunch of porcupines huddling together on a cold winter’s night. He said, "The colder it gets outside, the more we huddle together for warmth; but the closer we get to one another, the more we hurt one another with our sharp quills. And in the lonely night of earth’s winter eventually we begin to drift apart and wander out on our own and freeze to death in our loneliness." Christ has given us an alternative: to forgive each other for the pokes we receive. That allows us to stay together and stay warm. And it also makes it possible for us to endure the pain.