April 15, 2021 – Click here to listen
My son visited last week and we went fishing on Friday. He insisted that he clean the boat and stated he needed no help and could clean it faster without me. I thought that was a nice gesture and thanked him. When he finished cleaning it, he needed to finish raising the boat on the lift. (My very large boat heavy boat is stored on a boat lift at my house.) Somehow, he pushed the wrong buttons and as soon as the lift started raising the boat he walked away. He got to the end of the dock and happened to turn back to look and the boat was nearing the point of being turned over. One side was going up and the other was not. Yikes!
My wife was upstairs and saw it happening and started screaming for me and telling me the boat was turning over. I frantically ran outside and it took a hair-raising effort to adjust one side down and finally back the boat off the lift into the water. The lift had to be adjusted which was accomplished by shouting instructions to my wife who was on the dock, (we were in the boat) and then I had to maneuver it back on the lift properly and raise it to its proper position.
So I have been busy doing other things and yesterday I finally went out to give the boat a more detailed cleaning and fine tune anything that needed attention. As soon as I got on the boat, I smelled rotten fish. I opened the bait cooler and nearly gagged. My son had forgotten to remove the bait from it and bloated rotten mullet and assorted bait were floating around in brown slimy water. Flies were buzzing around and I spent the better part of two hours recleaning the cooler and the boat.
The word “strangle” came to mind.
So today I was reading C.S. Lewis, and you guessed it, the piece I read was written about forgiveness. He wrote in part, . . . Forgiveness says “Yes, you have done this thing, but I accept your apology, I will never hold it against you and everything between us two will be exactly as it was before.”
Hmmm . . . My initial reaction was that if my 44 year old son would have been more attentive I would have been spared this ordeal. Grrrr . . .
So I read on and this passage pierced my hard heart, “Real forgiveness means looking steadily at the sin, the sin that is left over without any excuse, after all allowances have been made, and seeing it in all its horror, dirt, meanness and malice, and nevertheless being wholly reconciled to the man who has done it.”
My son doesn’t get to fish often and it was terrific that he was trying to be considerate because he knew I was really exhausted when he offered to clean the boat. He cleaned it the best he knew how. And the lift raising ordeal, well that was just an accident and accidents happen. All told we had a great time fishing and all of the foregoing, well, that is just another war story that can be told and retold. The word “Strangle” has been replaced by forgiveness and my love for him will remain so forever.
So I was thinking of this and wondering if in some small way God views forgiveness in somewhat similar fashion. To be sure we are guilty of sin and it does not escape His watchful eye. And yet as Mr. Lewis so eloquently explains, “Real forgiveness means looking steadily at the sin, the sin that is left over without any excuse, after all allowances have been made, and seeing it in all its horror, dirt, meanness and malice, and nevertheless being wholly reconciled to the man who has done it.”
The impact of having one’s sins completely forgiven (as though they never occurred) is mind boggling to an old sinner like me. It is incomprehensible. One name the Bible calls our Savior Jesus is LOVE. God looks past the rotten, stinking, bloody, dead slimy mess of sins in our lives and offers a cleansing of unfathomable love and forgiveness that is so thorough it allows us to spend eternity with Him. Praise His Holy Name!
Luke 23:34
Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” And they divided up his clothes by casting lots.