Dear Friends,
I've been reading the book What's So Amazing About Grace? by Philip Yancey. In the book, Yancey tells stories of grace and stories of ungrace. Reading these stories has been a great reminder to me that being a Christian is all about forgiveness. We have nothing else to stand on but grace and nothing else to offer this broken world but grace. Our hope is grace and grace alone. My foster kids have often asked me what the solution is to the Israel-Palestine situation as if I have so much wisdom that I could pronounce the terms of a fair and just plan for peace. I have nothing else to say to them about this war or any others but that the two sides must forgive each other. There is no other way.
A story Yancey tells that I've been thinking about today is one he repeats from Walter Wink's Engaging the Powers. Ten years after WWII, a group of Polish Christians received a request to meet with a group of Christians from West Germany who wanted to ask their forgiveness for what the Germans did to Poland during the war. At first, it seemed the Poles would refuse. One responded, "What you are asking is impossible. Each stone of Warsaw is soaked in Polish blood! We cannot forgive."
But before those who had come with the request on behalf of the Germans left, they prayed together with the Polish believers, reciting the Lord's Prayer. As they got to the words "forgive us our sins as we forgive . . ." they found they could not go on. The same Pole who had said earlier that forgiveness was impossible said, "I must say yes to you. I could no more pray the Our Father, I could no longer call myself a Christian, if I refuse to forgive. Humanly speaking, I cannot do it, but God will give us his strength!"
The person who spoke these words seems to have understood the core of what his faith was all about, the forgiveness of Jesus, which is the hope of the world. As the poet George Herbert said, "He that cannot forgive others, breaks the bridge over which he himself must pass."
A prayer for today:
Father, thank you for your incredible grace for me. Thank you for the love you have for the people of this world that led you to send us Jesus and to bring us forgiveness through him. Teach me your grace. Teach us all to forgive like you. We have no other hope. Amen.
Love in Christ,
Michelle
