I'm giving for you...

Almost sounds pompous, doesn't it?

I'm giving for you... It could sound stuck up if said in the wrong way. But I doubt if you've really caught on to what I mean.

I'm giving for you. Giving for... Get it yet?

Try rearranging a little------I'm forgiving you.

You probably never saw that before did you? I never had, til one of my friends pointed it out at our youth meeting. It struck me in a way that I have never been struck before: not as relates to forgiveness, anyway.

Forgiveness is something that we all struggle with. Oh, I won't deny that there are a few people who it comes easy to. I don't happen to be one of them; which is something that I've learned the hard way over the last few years.

Forgiving is hard. It really is. When someone has promised to be there, and suddenly are no longer there, it hurts. You don't feel like forgiving them. When someone has wounded you beyond repair...when you've been left alone, abandoned, unloved, unappreciated, taken for granted,  it's hard to want to forgive. When a friend has turned their back on you...when you've been betrayed. Forgiving is hard.

But do we have a right conception of what forgiving really is? What it means, both to you as the forgiver and the one being forgiven? Do we really know?

I know that until the other night, at the youth meeting, I hadn't thought of things in the correct light.

Really, when you forgive someone, what are you doing?

You're releasing them.

Releasing? No way....

Yes. Honest. Think about it.

You're releasing them from the anger and hurt you've experienced. You're releasing them from the responsibility of what they did. Don't take me wrong on that one: alot of the time, they will still have to deal with the results of their actions. But as far as you can and are concerned, the situation never happened. It's forgetting.

But forgiving and forgetting doesn't really work. You can't forgive and forget.

Can you?

In the situations that I have experienced in my life, I have run across one very pointed truth about forgiveness: the only kind of forgiveness worth having remembers without pain. Without anger. Without resentment or a grudge. It can remember---without reliving and re-enflaming the moment. Forgiveness remembers.

But it also forgets.

Forgiveness forgets the pain, forgets the hurt, the anger, the situation. Forgiveness takes all of that onto itself.

But wait, you may be saying. There's no way I could take something that someone else did and put it on myself.

Why not?

That's the only reason that we have even a chance at eternal life, you know. Because the Son of God took the results of what we did and died that we might have life, and that more abundantly. Jesus will forever bear the scars of His ordeal as a testament of His love... For us. And we have been called to be like Jesus....

Can we not do the same?

The most poignant stories of forgiveness and mercy are those that tell of this simple truth. Of taking someone else's terrible results from a wrong decision--especially as it relates to you--and bearing it with and for them.

Imagine with me for a moment. You've hurt a friend terribly, and they're gone. No longer "travelling" with you, as it were. You're with some others, and you're walking through a dark forest. It's kinda scary, but you know you have to walk through. It just must be done. There's no way to avoid it.

As you walk, the darkness falls heavier and heavier until you can barely see a thing. And then, to add to all of that, it begins to rain. You realize you're lost. You have no idea of which way to go. You sit down on a log and let your head fall into your hands--you're alone, with the knowledge of having done something terrible to someone you loved not so long before.

The group you were with melts away--looking for the right trail, huddling together, trying to keep warm. You're left alone on your log, rain soaking into your clothes and mingling with the tears that are by now on your cheeks.

Then you feel a hand on your shoulder and a warm being next to you. Someone sits down beside you on the log and wraps an arm around you and you feel another head touch yours. You're surprised, but you think it to be one of the group who finally felt sorry for you. Thankful for the companionship, you huddle next to them for awhile before looking up to see who it was that finally had compassion on you.

How surprised would you be to see that other friend; the one that you had wounded; sitting beside you? Rain soaking into their clothes as well. They're in the dark just like you, in the same miserable condition as you... But they've suddenly appeared from almost nowhere. They have no reason whatsoever to be here. What would you think? What would you say?

Perhaps you'd burst into tears. Maybe you'd be shocked. "What are you doing here!"

Imagine their response, said with a gentle smile... "I came after you. I forgive you....I'm giving for you..."

What would you do? How would that friendship be after the fact?

Isn't that what Jesus did? He came through our dark forest, even after we had sinned against Him and His law, and not only comforted us in the rain; sat beside us and loved us; He gave Himself for us... He died, that we might have a way to escape the dark forest of sin. He gave it all....

Jesus is our example.

We are called to be like Him.

Have you ever gone after a friend into the forest? Have you ever had a friend come after you?

Are you giving for those around you? ...especially those who have hurt you? Are you searching for opportunities to be all that you can be to those in need?

Are you forgiving? Are you releasing? Forgetting? and remembering? Are you giving for...?

So, my friend... I'm giving for you. Not because I have to, but because I want to. You know who you are.

I'm forgiving you...

Don't give up... by God's grace and direction, I'll find you in this dark forest somehow.