FORGIVENESS, JESUS STYLE

?”  You must understand that as individuals, we will have pain.  Our three dimensional world pretty much guarantees that and we are given ample opportunities here on earth to bring harm to ourselves and harm to others.  But I encourage you to look at the life Jesus led.  Look at His actions.  Observe His Walk.

Don’t you think that He was disappointed in people?  In the same people He was sent to save?  Don’t you think he was hurt when Judas betrayed Him?  Don’t you think that when He went into the wilderness to pray, He did not shed tears just as we do in our times of conflict and pain?  Oh, but yes dear brothers and sisters.  He did.  He wasn’t a plastic model of a human being with no feelings, no choices no disappointments.  He was human.  He was one of us.  He was just like us.  He worked for the first twenty eight years of His life as a carpenter, following along in his father’s trade.  He took care of the bills, he cared for his mother.  He didn’t come here to earth and sit on a throne and have tea and crumpets delivered at a whim.  No, he came here and lived among us.  Ate and drank with us.  Walked with us.  He spoke kindness to even those who condemned him.  He was tempted.  The devil offered him the world in exchange for his Loyalty To God.  But He didn’t budge.

The devil offers us a latte in exchange for a small child’s supper in a starving third world country today and we usually take the latte. Ouch, that hurt.  But it’s the truth.  And deep down inside-we all know it.

What then, of our pain?  How is our pain so much more important than the suffering of another?  How is it that the impact an event has on us as individuals should carry so much more weight than on another involved in the same circumstance?  It shouldn’t.  It doesn’t have to.

Jesus prayed as He hung on the cross-bleeding and dying in excruciating pain. “Forgive them, Father. They know not what they do.” 

And yet we can step on a thumb tack and be angry for three days at the person who accidentally dropped it on the floor.  Because their action caused US pain!  Well…if we believe what Jesus taught.  And if we are truly walking in a Christlike manner then our whole world of thought is transformed.  We will think a whole lot less about ourselves and a whole lot more about others.