Approach/Avoidance of Forgiveness

Every morning I receive (via e-mail) an offering from the lectionary (ELCA Daily Readings) and from the Henri Nouwen Society. The readings of the last few days have focused upon mercy and forgiveness.  They call me to wonder about the breadth and the depth of God's compassionate forgiveness.  I also wonder about the challenge of stretching my human boundaries which limit my ability to bestow or receive forgiveness.  


I realize that forgiveness liberates my heart and mind by dissolving the chains of anger, fear, regret or shame that bind me to the past.  Whether I am poised as the doer of the unforgiveable deed or as the one who has been "done to" by the offender, staying in the place where something is unforgiveable halts my heart's movement towards wholeness.  


“The human heart,” writes John O’Donohue in his book, To Bless the Space Between Us. , “continues to dream of a state of wholeness, the place where everything comes together, where loss will be made good, where blindness will transform into vision, where damage will be made whole, where the clenched question will open in the house of surprise, where the travails of a life’s journey will enjoy a homecoming. To invoke a blessing is to call some of that wholeness upon a person now.”

We are all in need of forgiveness.  It is way to freedom.  Jesus knew that.  As he was dying he prayed on behalf of those who had betrayed him and who were crucifying him (Luke 23:34).  Because he did that, I am equipped to forgive offenders as well as receive forgiveness for the large and small offenses I have committed--the things I have done or have left undone.  

It is so simple to hear that good news.  I hover around it, approaching it with wonder and hope.  And yet its simplicity challenges the hardness of my head and my heart, and I avoid it.  And in that way I am my own worst enemy.  I am grateful that Christ, the advocate of the wounded and offended, stands poised every moment to open my "clenched questions" about how to forgive or how to bless my enemies.

How about you?  In what aspects of your life or in which relationships to you experience that tender invitation to forgive or to be forgiven.  How do you approach that invitation?  How do you avoid it?