Tuesday of the Second Week of Lent - March 5, 2013
Tuesday of the Second Week of Lent
Matthew 18:21 – 22
Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?”
Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.”
The mindset that wants to weigh, measure, and calculate spiritual realities runs counter to the spirit of Jesus and the actual work of transformation.
Measuring forgiveness, for instance, by keeping track and acting as if it were a finite reality, is an act of human control. It suggests that in calculating forgiveness, I can manage it or have some control over it, which is the very thing the ego or small self wants to do.
Further, by acting as if forgiveness were a finite reality, that there is only so much of it, and that it must be rationed in order not to run out of it, we deny the limitless, unbounded resources at God’s disposal. Forgiveness, mercy, peace, love . . . God spends them on the world in abundance, and yet they are never diminished in the spending. What is given away, in love, is always regenerated.
77 is not “7” made large. 77 might as well have been 77,777. In other words, you get to a place in life where you stop counting. You give forgiveness, not controlling it, but out of who you are in God and in relation to others . . . and what you give away is always replenished.
Matthew 18:21 – 22
Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?”
Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.”
The mindset that wants to weigh, measure, and calculate spiritual realities runs counter to the spirit of Jesus and the actual work of transformation.
Measuring forgiveness, for instance, by keeping track and acting as if it were a finite reality, is an act of human control. It suggests that in calculating forgiveness, I can manage it or have some control over it, which is the very thing the ego or small self wants to do.
Further, by acting as if forgiveness were a finite reality, that there is only so much of it, and that it must be rationed in order not to run out of it, we deny the limitless, unbounded resources at God’s disposal. Forgiveness, mercy, peace, love . . . God spends them on the world in abundance, and yet they are never diminished in the spending. What is given away, in love, is always regenerated.
77 is not “7” made large. 77 might as well have been 77,777. In other words, you get to a place in life where you stop counting. You give forgiveness, not controlling it, but out of who you are in God and in relation to others . . . and what you give away is always replenished.
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