A Gracious Act Changed a Young Person’s Life.

A young man comes up to a Rabbi at a wedding and introduces himself and the Rabbi replies, “Ah you were my student in the third grade. Haven’t seen you for a long time. What’s happened to you? What are you doing now?”

“Well, I am a teacher just like you.” the student replied.

“What inspired you to become a teacher?” the Rabbi enquired

“It was you.” The student replied.

“How did I inspire you to become a teacher?” the Rabbi asked.

“I saw what an impact you had on me, and I realized what an impact I could have on children, so I decided to go into education,” the student replied

“What impact did I have on you?” the Rabbi asked.

“You remember.” the student replied.

 “Remember what?” the Rabbi asked.

“I stole a watch in the class and another student reported that to you. You then asked the class, that, whoever took the watch, to give it back. No one responded. Then you locked door and asked everyone to stand against the wall and to close their eyes and went on to search each chap’s pocket. You found the watch in my pocket, took it out and continued to the end of the line. When we opened our eyes, you gave the watch to the rightful owner and said nothing more. When I thought of how you saved my dignity that day instead of embarrassing me in front of the whole class as a thief, as a liar, as a no gooder, as a despicable child,  you said nothing. You saved my soul, you saved my dignity. You did not mention this to anybody else, not to the owner but not even to me. Not once. It happened, it was over, I understood the message, and when I looked at that I said, this is what a teacher is, this is what a real educator is, this is what I want to be. Therefore, I went into education.” The student explained.

“Amazing.” the Rabbi responded.

‘But Rabbi, don’t you remember the story, when you see me and hear my name. When I stole the watch and what I did and what you did. You did not want to embarrass me with everyone’s eyes closed.” The student asked

“I would not know, I would not know who took the watch,” the rabbi said

“Why not, it is a pretty dramatic story,” the student said.

The Rabbi responded, “because I also closed my eyes.”

The Transformative Power of Forgiveness

Over the years in ministry, I have discovered that everyone is wounded and everyone wounds. We all need forgiveness, and we all need to forgive. We hurt others and have been hurt.

Some feel so bad that they can’t believe that God can forgive them. 

Likewise, when we have been hurt our first instinct is to retaliate, which makes the situation worse. The only real power you have over someone who hurts you is the power of forgiveness. So, for your own sake forgive them and move on. As someone said, “To err is human, to forgive is divine’. Yes, it is difficult, but trust in the Lord and He will give you the grace to forgive.

The truth here is when you accept that God has forgiven you of your past, you are empowered to forgive others who have hurt you.

Let me illustrate this in a situation I had in my ministry years ago. A young couple came to ask me to officiate at their marriage. During the interviews I realized that the young lady was struggling with her past life. She asked for help, and I had a few counselling sessions with her. She recounted that in her early life she was an only child. Her mother was physically handicapped. Her father was an alcoholic who would return home in the evening after work, intoxicated, and in a foul mood, he would take out his frustrations on her. Out of fear for him she would hide. He would verbally and physically abuse her. Then one day he deserted the family and never returned. Shortly afterwards her mother passed away. Child Welfare stepped in and placed her with family who unfortunately further abused her, so that by the age of 16 she ran away.  At 18 years of age, she met Peter a loving young man of 23 who took her under his wing and loved her unconditionally. However, she admitted that her past hounded her, she needed to let go of her bitterness and hatred towards her family. After much reflection she accepted the forgiveness of God and was able to forgive her family, and especially her father.

About 6 months after her wedding, she came and told me she wanted to find her father and to tell him personally she had forgiven him. It took some searching, but after many false alarms she eventually found him in a very poor condition. She immediately took him into her home where she nursed him. After a few weeks of love and care, he asked her why she had searched for him, after his abusive behaviour towards her and her mother.  Her answer was brief. “I wanted to find you to forgive you for what you did to me.” “Why, what made you do that?” he asked. She replied, “God has forgiven me for my wrongdoing, and I wanted to forgive you”. With that he broke down and they wept together. He then confessed that he left home because he realized what he was doing to her and feared that he would kill her in one of his drunken states’.

In the power of receiving God’s forgiveness, she was able to forgive her father!

Forgiveness is a decision, not an emotion. If you wait until you feel like forgiving, you risk remaining trapped in the torture of resentment.

Forgiveness happens when you can view the offender with compassion.

The love of God gives us the possibility of the newness of life that forgiving and being forgiving brings.

Its Never Too Late to Start Over

The resurrection of Jesus promises that things can always be new again.
 
That means it’s never too late to start over. Nothing is irrevocable. No betrayal is final. No sin is unforgivable. Every form of death can be overcome. There isn’t any loss that can’t be redeemed. Every day is virgin.
 
In the resurrection we are assured that there are no doors that are eternally closed, every time we close a door, or one is closed on us, God opens another for us. The resurrection assures us that God never gives up on us, even if we give up on ourselves, that God writes straight with the crooked lines of our lives, that we can forever re-virginize, regain lost innocence, become post-sophisticated, and move beyond bitterness. In a scheme of things where Jesus breathes out forgiveness on those who betray him and God raises dead bodies from the dead, we can begin to believe that in the end all will be well and every manner of being will be well and everything, including our own lives, will eventually end sunny side up.
 
However, the challenge of living this out is not just that of believing that Jesus rose physically from the grave, but also, and perhaps even more importantly, to believe that – no matter our age, mistakes, betrayals, wounds, and deaths – we can begin each day afresh, virgin, innocent again, a child, a moral infant, stunned at the newness of it all. No matter what we’ve done, our future is forever pregnant with wonderful new possibility. Resurrection is not just a question of one day, after death, rising from the dead, but it is also about daily rising from the many mini-graves within which we so often find ourselves…                                                                     Ron Rolheiser 

Jesus reassures us in 1:John 11:25-26
I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this? 

Does Evil Exist?

Does evil exist?

The university professor challenged his students with this question. Did God create everything that exists? A student bravely replied, "Yes, he did!"

"God created everything? The professor asked.

"Yes sir", the student replied.

The professor answered, "If God created everything, then God created evil since evil exists, and according to the principal that our works define who we are then God is evil". The student became quiet before such an answer. The professor was quite pleased with himself and boasted to the students that he had proven once more that the Christian faith was a myth.

Another student raised his hand and said, "Can I ask you a question professor?"

"Of course", replied the professor.

The student stood up and asked, "Professor, does cold exist?"

"What kind of question is this? Of course it exists. Have you never been cold?" The students snickered at the young man's question.

The young man replied, "In fact sir, cold does not exist. According to the laws of physics, what we consider cold is in reality the absence of heat. Every body or object is susceptible to study when it has or transmits energy, and heat is what makes a body or matter have or transmit energy. Absolute zero (-460 degrees F) is the total absence of heat; all matter becomes inert and incapable of reaction at that temperature. Cold does not exist. We have created this word to describe how we feel if we have no heat."

The student continued, "Professor, does darkness exist?"

The professor responded, "Of course it does."

The student replied, "Once again you are wrong sir, darkness does not exist either. Darkness is in reality the absence of light. Light we can study, but not darkness. In fact we can use Newton's prism to break white light into many colours and study the various wavelengths of each colour. You cannot measure darkness. A simple ray of light can break into a world of darkness and illuminate it. How can you know how dark a certain space is? You measure the amount of light present. Isn't this correct? Darkness is a term used by man to describe what happens when there is no light present."

Finally the young man asked the professor, "Sir, does evil exist?"

Now uncertain, the professor responded, "Of course as I have already said. We see it every day. It is in the daily example of man's inhumanity to man. It is in the multitude of crime and violence everywhere in the world. These manifestations are nothing else but evil."

To this the student replied, "Evil does not exist sir, or at least it does not exist unto itself. Evil is simply the absence of God. It is just like darkness and cold, a word that man has created to describe the absence of God. God did not create evil. Evil is not like faith, or love that exist just as does light and heat. Evil is the result of what happens when man does not have God's love present in his heart. It's like the cold that comes when there is no heat or the darkness that comes when there is no light."

The professor sat down.

The young man's name — Albert Einstein.