Thursday, June 12, 2008

• On Forgiveness

  
  I close my eyes, and I see it again as if it were yesterday.
  
  In a time before.  The rain fell that night, crashing to the ground as if the heavens themselves opened up and the angels wept, their tears blanketing my entire world in cold november rain.  Stepping out of the door of my car, and letting it swing open.  She sat there, on the patio in front of the door, her head buried in her lap.  Her long black hair, wet with rain, flowing down from her head and down her knees as she sat, illuminated by the white light of my headlights.
  
  In the stillness of that moment, I knew.  All was clear.  I loved her.
  
  I stood behind my door in that moment, my hand resting on its firm leather trim.  The rain fell on me and struck my face, running off of my jaw; and washing down the soft hand-cut wool of my tailored suit.   I didn't flinch.  The sky lit up in that moment, as lightning flashed across the sky, illuminating the world around me in a burst of pure, white light.  My breath stopped, and I felt no ache in my heart.  Above the chatter of the rain, I could hear the powerful German twin-turbochargers whistling in the cold night air, cooling off after a one-hundred and fifty mile per hour blitz down the dark interstate to here where I stood in that moment, in the falling rain.
  
  She had called me as I left work to come home that night.  Something was wrong.  She wouldn't tell me over the phone.
  
  "Are you okay?"  I asked her.   I bent down in front of her, and put my hands on her forearms.  She shook her head, and sobbed.  I kneeled close to her, and took her in my arms.  "What's wrong?"  I asked, pressing my chest against her, and wrapping my arms around her tightly.  I could smell her perfume, and the scent of her wet hair matted against my face.  She sat in my arms, trembling... shaking, sobbing.
  
  
  
  

  "I love you."  I whispered to her.
  
  "I'm pregnant."  She cried, trembling.
  
  "It's okay."  I told her.
  
  "It's..."  She stopped.  "It's not yours."  I felt her exhale and shudder in my arms.
  

  
  
  
  I paused for a moment, feeling as if a flaming spike had been driven straight through my head and straight into my heart.  I knew what she was about to tell me, from the moment I arrived, but hearing her say it still tore through me.  The sickening feeling spread from my chest and stomach, making me feel hollow.  I took a deep breath and decided to abandon all logic and instead...
  
  ...to Love.
  
  "It's okay,"  I comforted her, kissing her on the top of her head and holding her tight against my chest.  "It's okay,"  I pulled her close, and let the pain in my heart ease, as it filled with Love.  "I love you."
  
  She cried, and she cried.  And I held her.  For what seemed like hours.  After the porch light had gone out.  After the engine turned off and the headlights blinked out.  As we sat there in the dark night, with rain falling all around us, the night sky exploding with thunder and lightning, I held her.  I held her hand, and gripped it firmly and as surely as the first night I swore my love and devotion to her.  And she cried.
  
  And the rain continued to fall.
  
  
  
  
  

  *****
  

  
  
  
  
  Diamonds are not forever.  But the Love of God is.
  
  I have been praying for my friend Jacob recently.  My heart feels pain for him, for though my experience was painful, his is magnitudes worse.  He is a godly man, a man of faith.  And he struggles with forgiveness.  His wife had maintained a long-time affair with another man for years, before their marriage and for many years afterwards to this day continuing after Jacob's divorce from her.  That other man even fathered his children, and he had lived thinking his children were his own for all those years.  It was within recent years that this was all revealed to him.  And he struggles with it.
  
  
  

  I told her that I would remain with her and help her raise their child, but that was my choice.  I made that choice out of Love, the kind of Love that our Lord God loves us with -- with full knowledge of what it involved.  And I would have stayed true to my word had she not made the decision to leave me and be with him, the man I once called my friend.

  
  
  Jacob, however, did not get the chance to make that choice.  He trusted his wife, completely, as love should be -- the kind of love that our Lord God gives to us, so that we can give it to each other -- and she took that trust and used it against him; and it wasn't until his daughters were self-sufficient that his wife revealed her treachery and betrayal to him as she divorced him to be with the other man she had been having an affair with all these years, who fathered his children.  Jacob didn't get the chance to make the choice like I did, but instead, he got left with the knowledge that two decades of his life, given to his wife and family in love, were two decades of life lost to deceit.
  
  How he endures, and how he remains in Faith to our Lord God is a testament to the kind of Faith that we should all have.  Yet, understandably, he finds it difficult to forgive his ex-wife and the other man.
  
  I struggle with this. 
  
  A deep part of me is angered on Jacob's behalf.  How could somebody do that to such kind and gentle a man as he?  How could somebody take advantage of somebody like him, knowing that he would never suspect it?  How could somebody take on the guise of a good Christian man and woman and yet hide such deep, despicable sin for so many years?
  
  In my anger, I want to pray and call down the angels of the LORD to strike these two down in righteous, holy fury.  I want to pray for the vengeance and wrath of the LORD to come down from the sky and destroy them in pillars of fire.  I want to pray that the LORD send His mighty waters and sweep them away into a watery grave.
  
  But I cannot.  He is my brother.  She is my sister.  And my Lord Christ commands me to love them.  And He convicts me in knowledge.  In the eyes of our Lord God, I was no more righteous than they; and it is only my salvation and faith by which I am justified.  The burden of our sins were equal in the eyes of the Lord; and He died for us while we were sinners out of His love for us.
  
  
  
  

  It is here, where we find truth.  How can we forgive? 
  
  Because our Lord God forgave us. 
  
  For all that we have sinned against Him, He forgave us.  The Lord reminds me of my past, and reminds me that I was far, far, far from being anywhere near a righteous man; that I was an evil, wicked man that committed heinously just about every single sin in the book; so much that the devil smiled on me as being one of his own.  And in that, knowing that we ourselves have been redeemed and forgiven, how can we not forgive others just the same?

  
  
  
  These are things that are difficult.  I do not expect Jacob to be able to suddenly forgive his ex-wife and her lover.  But in my prayers for him, I do expect him to be able to begin to forgive, that our Lord God would fill him with the Holy Spirit so that the process of healing would accelerate, and that he would be protected in Him from despair and grief and misery.
  
  All I can do is pray for him.
  
  And that, friends, is the best thing we can do for him.  For who are we as men?  What power do we have on our own?  What can we do, but offer words of condolence and physical comfort in hugs?  What beyond this can we do?  And then we ask, what can our Lord God do?
  
  Everything.
  
  And the Lord our God listens to the prayers of the faithful.  For if faith the size of a mustard seed can move a mountain; how amazing is the power of faithful prayer?  He who created the universe, laid the foundations of the earth, and made us out of dust and breathed life into us -- has infinite power; and the power to heal and reconcile beyond the comprehension of human understanding. 
  
  All that is required is that we believe -- that we have Faith.  And with our Faith, the Holy Spirit comes into our lives and fills us beyond our human capacity to love.  We stop loving as human beings, but through Christ in us, we love as Christ loves us.  With Christ in us, we learn Agape -- true, pure, unconditional love.  Un-Conditional Love.  Christ does not say "I will love you if you don't hurt me," nor does He say "I will love you if you repent," -- no, Christ says "I love you."  Period.  And that is the way we need to love each other, if we are to be able to overcome these kinds of trials and tribulations of the heart.
  
  
  
  
  

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