“In many ways the body of Christ in this nation is crippled because of our lack of understanding of what forgiveness really is.”
Bible teacher and author Sheila Walsh shares encouraging insight on the importance of forgiveness and what it means to forgive.
How can we forgive others in a world that isn’t fair?
She shares a story about her son Christian when he was younger. It demonstrates an important life lesson we can all learn about forgiveness.
“I could tell he had a terrible day…he said to me, ‘Mom do you want to know what happened to me today?’
He told me about his best friend having done something but blaming Christian for it, so Christian got in trouble with the teacher.
He said, ‘You have to tell her that it wasn’t me!’ and his friend replied, ‘I’m not going to tell her.’
Christian says to me, ‘I’m just finished with him mom, he is off my prayer list!’”
That night, Sheila asked her son to set out on an adventure with her and bring a large bag of flour that she had purchased earlier in the day. They began walking across the golf course where they lived at the time together, with the flour bag in Christians grip.
“He said to me, ‘Mom it’s just too heavy’ and I said, ‘No we’re going to need it don’t drop it!’ Eventually he came to a place where he said, ‘I can’t do this anymore’, and he plopped down on the grass.”
“I said to him, ‘Christian that’s what it looks like when you don’t forgive. Your friend’s probably already asleep; you’re the one that you’re carrying the load. I know that what happened was not fair, but you need to remember that fair doesn’t live here, but Jesus does.”
Sheila’s story about her son carrying the flour is a metaphor that can be applied in all of our lives.
Forgiveness is something that doesn’t always seems fair and God doesn’t force us to do it. Rather, forgiveness is something that we should see as a gift to us.
“This is God’s gift to us. To live in a world that’s not fair, we get to take that bag of flour and drop it at the foot of the cross so that we can be free.”
