Yesterday Walmart announced that it would open their stores two hours earlier for Black Friday shoppers. So I guess it is time - time to start making lists, checking it, and shopping until you drop every bit of that hard earned penny into the deep pockets of a few privileged Chinese impresarios. Though majority of the US population has no concern for Christ anymore, we care all about Christmas, or at least Christmas shopping. We worry about finding ideal gifts for our family, friends and co-workers, and stress over it when we can't find suitable gifts. As a person who believes wholeheartedly in capitalistic societies, I wouldn't even dare to suggest that we should quit with all these gift nonsense. Instead, I would like to make some practical gift ideas for the upcoming holiday season.
We usually give gifts to people who are good to us; we also give gifts to people whom we like, love, appreciate or want favors from. This is also the reason why many of us struggle with the "gift of forgiveness". Forgiving others contradicts every thought process of a rational human being, it amounts to saying to the wrongdoer "Thank you for hurting me". Gifts are free and deserving; the person who has wronged us no longer deserve anything free from us - they must "pay" for their actions. We would like to hold onto this gift of forgiveness for as long as we can. We like to see a genuine change of heart from the perpetrator before even consider forgiving him. We always expect some sort of an apology as a precursor. But what we see in the gospels is that Jesus has a totally different way approaching the issue of forgiveness. The best example could be one of the last things that Jesus did - while hanging on a cross, He prayed: "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do" (Luke 23:34). Here, nobody asked for His forgiveness, nobody even showed any kind of remorse for their actions, they were mocking Him, challenging Him to "save himself if he was the chosen one". But for Jesus, it was simply a matter of putting preaching into practice, it was turning the other cheek to the one who struck you on the right cheek, it was handing over the cloak to the one who took possession of your tunic, and walking two miles with the one who forces you to walk with him one mile.
Forgiveness is a gift, a gift that one can give to an undeserving someone at an undeserving time. Forgiveness challenges human logic because we are being asked to give away something that is rightfully ours to an undeserving somebody, to reward somebody for being mean, rude, hurtful, unfaithful, and everything else that hurt us in some form or shape. Humans want revenge and retaliation when being wronged, and that makes forgiveness a gift from God - something not human. This is what God does, He forgives unconditionally. God made no demands of us before sending His only Son to die for our salvation on a cross, "But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8).
Ever wondered why God would insist so much about forgiving the transgressions of others? It was so important to Jesus that he even made it a condition - one of the few conditions that Jesus has in our relationship with God the Father - in the prayer that he taught us, "Forgive us our sins for we ourselves forgive everyone in debt to us" (Luke 11:4). Here is the thing: amidst all our reasons not to forgive, it must be understood that when we forgive others, we do it for us, not for the other person. Forgiveness is freeing ourselves from the pains and torments of the mind. It is allowing God's grace to heal a heart that bleeds and a body that hurts, through the works of the Holy spirit. It is always good to remember that in The Lord's Prayer, "Deliver us from evil" comes after the forgiveness - there is no deliverance without forgiveness. Choose not to worry about the price paid for the gift of forgiveness, instead look at it as an investment in God's justice and love. It is far worse and cost is immeasurable to think that holding onto our right to hurt, to resent, to negativity, to anger, and to hate would somehow help us feel better.
"I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust" (Matthew 5:44,45)
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