Then came Peter to him, and said, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times? 22Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven.  Mt 18:22, 23

There are so many scriptures about forgiveness.  It’s hard to choose one among them because they are all so pertinent.  A few months ago, I was reading “The Forgiveness Fix” by Amy Newmark, which is part of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series.  The stories included are loaded with ideas about wrongs unjustly committed against others and how those who were wronged found the depth of soul to forgive.  Reading the stories made me think about people in my past whom I needed to forgive.  Some of them were from long ago and not generally part of my consciousness.  However, they were obviously not forgotten since the thought of them dredged up the same old scenarios.  There were two in particular from my days studying abroad when I was twenty.

The first one I thought of was a professor I had for French literature.  It no longer matters what happened, but the incident has stuck with me and in fact has become a story to relate to my own international students who are studying here in the United States.  It had to do with words in French and English that are “false friends.”  Both languages have the same word, but they mean something different in each language.  Anyway, I decided to look up the professor online since google has so much information.  As it turns out, I had no idea at the time that he was a famous expert in literature having written books of his own.  He not only taught us, the foreign students, but also taught native students, and it appears that his native students loved him.  Finding articles about him online helped me to appreciate him in a different light.  It became clear that it was a simple case of my misunderstanding due to the word used, combined with his deep love of great literature.  Forgiving him helped me to see that his life had meaning and goodness to a lot of people.  

The other person was a little more difficult since it involved the woman who ran the boarding house where I stayed in that country.  God gave me the power and grace to forgive her as well.  A few months after forgiving her, I was going through some old papers and found her name.  I decided to look her up as well.  This time, there was not a lot of information, but there was one small note in an old newspaper.  It was an obituary.  The obituary said that her husband had died suddenly on Christmas Eve in Holland (they may have been Dutch immigrants to the country where I was) seven years before I met her.  He was just sixty years old.  What perspective that little note gave me!  That must have been so difficult for her.  The address was the same as the place where I stayed, and so she must have been left with a very large house to run by herself, it being her only source of income.  I now believe that she was just heartbroken and bitter without much sympathy left for a naïve twenty year whose American cultural mannerisms she did not understand (and vice versa!).

From these two lessons, I have learned how truly important it is to forgive.  We have no idea what has happened in other people’s lives to make them the way they are.  We all live in our human condition, with all of the baggage that has happened in our lives.  It becomes clear why Jesus said, 

For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. Mt 6:14, 15

We have such a supreme example of one who forgave the impossible.  Imagine the pain that Jesus was suffering through, not only physically, but also perhaps emotionally.  Was all of his work on earth in vain?  Where were his disciples?  We know of only one that was present at the crucifixion with his mother.  Yet, he trusted God his Father, and found the compassion and strength to think of others and to say:

Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.  Lk 23:34

Surely there is a vein for the silver and a place for gold where they fine it.  Iron is taken out of the earth, and brass is molten out of the stone.  Job 28:1, 2

 God created this earth and placed in it everything we need, including great natural resources and treasures.  At the same time, God loves to create parables and show mysteries through them.  Jesus told us that parables teach valuable lessons to the wise, but hide those lessons from the unworthy.

Ro 1:19, 20 Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them.  For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:

Even our physical earth is a parable.   The fact that we must mine the precious metals out of stone shows us that there are precious treasures to be mined from this life.  Henry David Thoreau wrote: “I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.”  There is so much to learn from this life we have.  We can suck out all the marrow of life, but sometimes it takes years to wear away the rock before the gold can shine through.

I admire my grandparents and my parents.  Because they have lived long, I can look back and see that in their younger years, they had their issues, but as they traveled through their life’s journey, somehow the rock wore away.  They changed and gained so much from living their journey.  Their lives were not easy.  I think that no one born on earth has an easy journey.  Thinking back to world events during my grandparents’ lives, they experienced World War I, followed immediately by the epidemic of the Spanish flu, then the Great Depression years and the years leading up to and through World War II.  My parents were then directly involved in World War II, even marrying just as my dad was about to be sent overseas.  World War II was followed by years of young children and financial struggles.  Once they found a little more ease and prosperity, the sixties with all of its turmoil exploded in front of their faces: the Vietnam war, upheavals throughout the country as blacks struggled to find true equality, assassinations of prominent figures including President Kennedy and Martin Luther King.   All of this immersed in a changing culture of rock music, drugs, “free love,” and demonstrations.

All of these things changed them.  As they traveled through their life’s journey, they changed and gained so much from experiencing these manifold trials.  They found confidence and peace.  They overcame impatience and anger.  They increased their love and kindness.  They learned to trust.  Through it all, they learned to pray and depend on their faith in God.  I remember my dad’s impatience and worry when I was young.  Now he is 102 years old and he doesn’t talk much any more, but when several of us gather together with him, he looks around the room and begins to cry and he says, “I love you all so much.”  Both his and my mom’s hardships turned to gold because they learned and grew from their experience here on earth.  Dad’s most recent gems were: “My wife in heaven is happy.  Pretty soon I’m going to be with her and we will be happy together.”  Then, “I’ve been praying for a long time now because I want us all to be happy with Him.”  And, “there’s lots of things to pray for.”

What golden nuggets of wisdom are we mining from our life on this ball of rock that we call Earth?  We should “suck the marrow” out of each experience.  Our exquisitely loving God and Father can only allow things into our lives that will somehow teach us something that will help us get closer to Him.  Sometimes that is a hard pill to swallow because life can be a very rocky road indeed.  Even so, let it bring out of us its golden fruit so that one day we too can say, “I’ve been praying for a long time because I want us all to be happy with Him.  There are lots of things to pray for.”