SCRIPTURE:
Later when King Xerxesʼ fury had subsided, he remembered Vashti and what she had done and what he had decreed about her.
Esther 2:1
"If your brother or sister sins against you, rebuke them; and if they repent, forgive them. Even if they sin against you seven times in a day and seven times come back to you saying ‘I repent,’ you must forgive them.”
Luke 17:3-4
OBSERVATION:
The scenario usually plays out something like this, someone or something does/goes horribly wrong, completely opposite of how I saw or had hoped for things to go. My first reaction each and every time is not just disappointment but irritation, anger and like Xerxes’s, fury. I say to myself…
“How dare you go against my wishes!”
“Why can’t you just follow directions?”
“Don’t you know better? “
“How many more times will you mess things up before you get it right?”
And then Jesus gently reminds me about grace, with 4 words, “…YOU MUST FORGIVE THEM.” And that gentle reminder wrecks havoc in my heart and soul.
APPLICATION:
While I want to forgive and offer grace, I also desire for there to be consequence for the failure to get it right. Like Xerxes, my initial reaction to someone or something’s failure is to respond with aggression, and an aggressive and emotion fueled response always results in remorse.
And again, Jesus offers the answer to maybe not fix it all at once, but to at least establish my steps in the right direction. To take the same energy I give to fury and apply it to grace. A furious grace. To actually apply this, I need to:
- Allow grace to win by taking time to allow for the emotions of the moment to subside. In other words, “step back and breathe before bulldozing and berating.” I’ve been offered grace upon grace upon grace by the Father. It pains me to think about how many times I’ve fallen short of His plan for me and the furious response that should’ve come my way. Yet my God has continued to offer mercy for each and every repentance.
- I can’t keep a record of wrongs. In other words, a lifetime of failures should not affect my response, just as a lifetime of my shortcomings have not affected God’s love for me. In offering grace to others, I cannot allow myself to remember the sins of the past, but take each and every moment of reconciliation as the floor of a new beginning, just as the Father has cast my sins into the depths of the sea (Micah 7:19).
PRAYER:
Jesus, thank You for faithfully offering me grace upon grace. May I do the same over and over again. Amen
