I recently read an article that quoted NYC pastor Rev.
Michael Keller: “We’ve become less of a forgiving culture.”
Everywhere we turn, we see the truth of this statement.
Fuses are short. Tempers are hot. Our willingness to assume good intentions
even when another’s action might have unintended consequences that inconvenience
or confuse us is getting thinner and thinner.
Civility seems lost as we see fights over food in grocery
stores, battles over parking spots, and pushes and shoves when a simple “excuse
me” would suffice.
Is civility in short supply, or is it grace?
Grace and forgiveness are intimately entwined. We United
Methodists believe that grace abounds in God’s love for us. So wide and
generous is God’s grace that it goes ahead of us, inviting us into a deeper
experience of it.
Have we really experienced this grace, freely and abundantly
given to us? How has this grace informed how we move in the world? Do we seek
to be a grace-filled people, our lives a witness to God’s grace?
This weekend, the clergy of the conference met together. We
acknowledged the difficult season we have been in, how COVID stretched us,
denominational angst stressed us, and feelings of inadequacy plagued us as we
considered the limits of our leadership in this time.
We needed to feel the reality of grace. And we needed the
power of forgiveness. We needed not only to forgive others, we needed to
forgive ourselves. There were tears and there were sighs too deep for words as
we prayed silently and together. We reminded ourselves of God’s grace that
assures us that we are forgiven.
May you, too, spend time in prayer with God. Let go of the
guilt you are feeling and feel God lightening your load through the power of
forgiveness. May the grace your
experience be poured out in the world, increasing kindness and compassion in a
world that has forgotten how to forgive.
