by Marilyn Ehle
“Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” Luke 23:34
“Jesus said, “This is how you should pray…
forgive us our sins,?as we forgive those who sin against us…” Luke 11:2-4
My heart is heavy as I sit writing in my presumably safe home this morning. Yet again, a senseless act of terror has struck a major city in my country. Families are mourning the death of loved ones. Scores of other families are beginning to face the reality that because of severe injuries to members of their families, their lives and futures are forever changed.
How should I, as a Christ-follower, live with and through this horrific, heart-rending disaster? I pray for comfort for the mourners. I pray for courage, healing, strength for the people who will walk the long path of physical, emotional and mental recovery and for those who will patiently walk alongside.
But creeping stealthily into my mind comes the thought that you, God, love the perpetrators of this crime as much as you love those suffering. NO! I cry out. That cannot be. They deserve to be apprehended and brought to justice. They deserve my hatred. Were it possible, I would volunteer to be on the jury condemning them. Surely your forgiveness does not extend to them. Surely not them, Lord.
I write these words not for any call to a particular political action. I definitely do not write to excuse terrorism or terrorists. But I am brought to my knees with the volatile nature of God’s forgiveness. I can no longer place the Good Friday words—“Father, forgive them for they know not what they do”—into mere intellectual theology that I read during Holy Week. I must struggle with, even resist, a forgiveness this deep and broad. This kind of forgiveness is not merely “spiritual.” It is a mirror of Christ’s unexplainable, to-the-death forgiveness. It’s a forgiveness I don’t really understand. It’s a forgiveness I desperately need to understand.
Peter, one of Jesus’ closest friends, was astounded when Jesus explained that the kind of forgiveness demanded of His followers—and the kind freely offered by God—goes beyond all our expectations. Indeed, beyond anything we are able to offer. A first step toward forgiveness is to begin praying for the person or persons who have perpetrated a wrong. While in that posture of humble prayer, we begin to see people as God sees them, as precious to the Heavenly Father. We can pray for justice even as we acknowledge that final and true justice is in the hands of God. And it is in those hands I find rest.
Father, I have no power to forgive the way you do. But I ask for your Holy Spirit to give me the will to forgive and then your power to live out that forgiveness.
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http://thoughtsaboutgod.com/blog/2013/04/21/me_surely-not-them-lord/