Father, forgive them…
They know not what they do
Father forgive them, for they know not what they do’ Luke 23:34
Forgiveness stops us becoming victims. It is the power that enables us to move on. Sometimes we will need to forgive people who we live with every day, sometimes a harsh word, a foolish action, a thoughtless moment fills us with anger and resentment. At that point it is easy to lash out at the other person and say, ‘how dare you?’
There are times we need to pull up a partner, or a sibling, or a child, but sometimes it is in the moment when they are most angry that they are most vulnerable and they need us to wait. Forgiveness it’s like an onion, you may need to peel off one layer at a time.
You may find the devil reminding you of yet more things to get angry about, don’t give him a way back in to bitterness, forgive them for the things that you’d forgotten, that he brought up into your mind, the historic things he wishes to remind you of, so that you were trapped as a victim in unforgiveness. The fresh things to be resentful of, to stop your relationship from flourishing.
Keep on forgiving, by asking Christ in to take the place of the hatred in your heart for that person, or the deed, or the action they didn’t do, or they did do that you wished they hadn’t, or whatever it is. As you allow the light of love in, you become a warrior for the good and not a victim for evil.
We do
need to set boundaries and tell people when they are being inappropriate, I am not saying forgiveness is condoning, it is not. But, in the heat of a moment, choosing to say nothing, can stop a flame turning into a fire. It takes the oxygen out of the argument, you cannot argue with someone when you are angry, if you refuse to argue back. It simply can stop an argument occurring and change the atmosphere.
I was reflecting the other day, on why the loss of my mother has been so deep. In our family, she was the peacemaker. Whenever there was tension in the air, she would bustle in with her beautiful smile and offer a cup of tea, or something else comforting. I remember being cold and her rubbing my back to keep me warm, or offering a hot water bottle. And she would tell little funny stories on the car journeys when my sister and I were getting on each other’s nerves. She would sing lullabies to me when I was little to fall asleep to, which I then sang for my own children when they were small.
She rarely lost her temper, she never swore, she always patiently hurried herself up when Dad was asking her to ‘Come on Jean’ without telling him off for rushing her. I only ever heard them argue once over something that was nothing, a rice dish that was taking longer to cook than usual because it was brown rice and a new recipe. We were in Scotland and my father was hungry after a long walk and grew more and more impatient about when it would be ready. She snapped, finally, coming into the living room and throwing a small cushion from the sofa at him and she marched off to the bedroom saying, “Make your own supper!” This was after many minutes of Dad constantly saying, ‘When was it going to be ready?’
The look of shock on his face when it happened I still remember. Shock and shame as he realised he had pushed her too far. Hard to do.
And I turned to our wonderful Ivy my granny/nanny who looked after me and was like a granny to myself and my sister and I said, “Does this mean divorce?”
I was so unused to hearing a raised voice in the house ever, I thought it must mean something significant.
When I look back at it now, I see what must have been a suppressed laugh from Ivy, who told my ‘shocked father’ to ‘go and kiss and make up with her dear’ and he hurried off to the bedroom to do just that. And she turned back to me still smiling and said, “No, I don’t think so dear.”
She knew better than me, at the tender age of ten or less, that most married life and life in general is full of conflicts that we need to face and resolve and overcome and the fact that my parents rarely had arguments was rare and was because my mother had the patience of a saint and my father himself was saintly in singing her praises- most of the time!
I am not suggesting each one of us behave in such a manner all the time. Sometimes conflict has to be faced and a resolution found at the time. My parents, like the rest of us, had their faults. We need to be able to forgive others and ourselves for losing our tempers or behaving badly, but offering forgiveness when things have gone wrong is a way of not being a victim, even when we think we are in the right.
The ultimate example of this sort of power- the freedom that forgiveness brings- is Christ on the Cross, who in his hour of agony cries out to his own heavenly father, who he has the perfect loving bond and relationship with and which all our families on earth are but a poor imitation of, he cries out and asks his father in heaven to forgive the people who have nailed him to the Cross because they ‘do not know what they’re doing’.
In that moment, he stops being a victim nailed to a tree, he stops being a man who is simply dying an excruciating death, he becomes the Son of God who is forgiving the world their blind folly and foolishness. In that moment, of what could have been seen as greatest weakness, is his greatest power because he does not let darkness win, even to the very end, he is thinking of those around him and loving them and letting light in, even in the midst of the rejection of that love.
This is true power, so often people do not see what they’re doing when they act out of fear, which leads to anger, or selfishly thinking of themselves and not our needs. We are called to not be a victim to their anger, which is theirs to own, or to their selfishness which is theirs to wallow in. We are not be a victim to their mistakes, which is theirs to say sorry for. We can refuse to hold onto those things in our own heads, we can decide to not let resentment and bitterness grow. It is a choice. And how do we do this? Well, we let go by forgiveness. We cease to become victims as we forgive, we become empowered to not be affected by other peoples’ weaknesses and to ask God to forgive our own.
Perhaps today as we come up to the start of Lent where we reflect upon our sins and sinfulness, we can think together of those people we need to let go of having taken up bitterness in our head.
We can each think of those people we need to forgive- be they alive or dead, or even in our own families right now.
If we find them hard to forgive because their actions are or were so hard, we can ask God to help us, we can cry out to our father in heaven, we can cry out to Christ to fill us with his love and vision to see why they behave as they do and so cast out the anger and bitterness in our own hearts and allow more of the light of Christ’s love back in.
Why not to try that this week?
Why not picture somebody who you still find it hard to love because they hurt you deeply, why not ask God to help you? Forgive them?
Why not choose this? Why not make Lent a fast from allowing yourself to get angry easily at small things that happen to you. Why not instead allow yourself a moment to breathe, to breathe in the love of Christ, to choose not to react when others hurt you, to not send that text or email back, to not react to that comment, to walk away? To choose to let go of the need to be right and to speak calmly later, to ask God to give you the wisdom of what to actually say when you’re not angry and to forgive- forgive them anyway, however they react.
Or forgive them if they are no longer with us…just to let go and let the light of Christ in, as you say with Him,
‘Father, forgive them for they know not what they do’…
And… Be blessed!
Helen