As we forgive
Then I will teach transgressors your ways,
So that sinners will return to you. Psalm 51:13
Read Matthew 18:23—35
There’s only one place for me in this story. I am the one who has been forgiven the unforgivable, the unrepayable debt. No one alive in Jesus’ day was worth 10,000 talents. No one could pay that debt. Least of all a slave! A slave, in any case, lived entirely at the whim of the master and any mercy the master had. And this master is an oriental despot. Everything is set up to assure me. My forgiveness is quite impossible. That is, it is impossible for me to earn or deserve or win. It comes to me because my God chooses, himself, to forgive. Forgiveness is all, all gift. So again I have no choice: it becomes the air I breathe, and my way ahead is to seek, whatever means I can, to practise forgiveness.
Father, in great generosity you have chosen to look upon this poor soul, all loaded with the record of my shames and compromises, the indiscretions and antagonisms of this day past, my impurity, my secretive little acts of greed — need I go on? — you have chosen to cover me with grace, to credit me with Christ, to sweep me up into your arms with joy as though I’ve always been devoted to you. Can I have it in me to be warm to those I resent, to release those who hurt? Or to want to? Yes, I want to. I pray earnestly for this forgiving heart.