Forgiving the Faceless

Forgiveness is a difficult part of the human experience. Alexander Pope, 18^th century poet, said: “To err is human, to forgive, divine.” 

The motivation to forgive is often related to the importance of the relationship. If I value a relationship, I’m more likely to forgive sooner and easier. My husband and I adhere to the rule “let not the sun go down upon your wrath” because our relationship is at stake. Forgiving family or friends is often motivated by our desire to sustain a relationship. Sometimes forgiveness is as much for us as the other person. If the offender cannot receive our forgiveness (e.g. after death) we may choose to forgive so that our own healing process can begin.

Our decision to forgive is always a choice. It may be difficult, whether motivated by love of the relationship or the need for self-healing or obedience to God. We may delay forgiveness because it feels better to be angry or because we first want to hear admission of guilt with a “really mean it” apology. Sometimes we postpone forgiveness to dole out punishment to the offender.

But what if the offender is a total stranger with whom we have no relationship? What if they are faceless? Maybe we don’t even have a way to contact them. Do we still need to forgive them?

I learned the lesson of forgiving strangers in my late twenties. I was running errands on a busy Saturday morning with my two little ones, when a drunk driver misjudged his turn and ran into the side of my compact car. He hit and ran and left me alone to pull my screaming bleeding three year old out of the car. Waiting on the ambulance, I felt too much fear to even detect the anger bubbling beneath the surface.

The seed of anger grew quietly in the background. In the foreground we managed through the crisis. There was a scary ride to the hospital, x-rays, lots of stitches, a concussion, and hospital stay. Then we received the police report. I stared at his name. The awful person who hurt us. He was arrested for driving intoxicated, unlicensed and uninsured. That no-good irresponsible drunk, who had hurt my innocent precious babies and fled like a spineless coward. My kernel of bitterness grew like a towering carnivorous plant. I disregarded it. I would never have the satisfaction of meeting him to give him a venomous piece of my mind.

Six months later, as I was praying, I felt an uncomfortable distance with God. Knowing that sin creates such separation, I asked forgiveness for any unbeknownst sin. Almost immediately, I pictured in my mind a drunk staggering into our church and kneeling at the altar to seek God. I was convicted of my own unforgiveness to this stranger. As much as I hated what he had done, I knew he was just another lost sheep that the Great Shepherd wanted to find and forgive. I was equally in need of God’s grace. So I forgave the faceless stranger so that I could also ask for forgiveness and restore relationship with God.

When walking with the Lord, the motivation to forgive becomes an imperative to obey Him. We must forgive to be forgiven. Matthew 6:14-15 [NLT] instructs us: If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins. Matthew 18:21-22 and Luke 17:3-4 instruct us to forgive repeat offenders, not once or twice, but a ridiculous number of times. And who do we have to forgive? Our family, our friends, ourselves, strangers. Anyone who wrongs us. It’s a difficult part of the human experience, until we find the divine grace that we have received and offer it to others. Even strangers.

How to Swallow Bad News

One of the nasty parts of life is getting “the phone call.” You know the one with bad news. Sometimes the news is distant enough to wince and continue about our day. Other times it is close and personal and piercing. The kind that leaves you gasping for air like you’ve been jumped in a dark alley. When you receive this kind of bad news, put the kettle on.

Put the kettle on. A familiar British expression that quite literally means to put a kettle of water on to boil for a cup of tea. But the words hold caverns of deeper meaning, as do many other innocuous phrases.

In the late 90’s my company moved me to the UK. My family and I spent the next couple of years trying to unravel some of the greater mysteries of British culture. To those of us from more emotional cultures, it may first seem the stoic faces of the Brits are devoid of feeling. But then you learn that a terse “Sorry” is not really an apology and “interesting” is not a good kind of fascination. Behind the subtle facial expressions and disguised phrases, there are all kinds of feelings. And a lot of wisdom as well.

My husband and I first heard the deeper meaning in the phrase “Put the kettle on” when an acquaintance unexpectedly died. A mutual friend said “When we heard about it, we put the kettle on.” Our trusty cultural reference The Xenophobe’s guide to the English, says this about their devotion to tea. “They have imbued it with almost mystical curative and comforting qualities. In moments of crisis, as a remedy for shock or just at a social gathering someone will suggest tea.”

As the remedy for shock, the four little words “Put the kettle on” have come to mean so much more to me.

I will stop everything else right now.

I need a moment to think before deciding on action.

I don’t even know what to say yet.

I want a sense of normalcy and the comfort of warmth.

I will get through this somehow.

I offer this bit of English perspective as a healthy way to start digesting tough news. The diagnosis. The loss. The betrayal. The failure. The disappointment.

Even greater than this wonderful ritual, I offer an unrelenting dependence on a God that is beside me every time I receive a bad news phone call. I have found this Psalm to be true.

They do not fear bad news; they confidently trust the Lord to care for them. [Psalm 112:7 NLT)

I believe there is no better way of living than with a confident trust in Him under all circumstances. To know He cares for you when you are hurting. To experience His peace when there is nothing peaceful. To feel His love in uncertainty. That, my friend, along with a good cup of tea, is how to get through the shock of some bad news. 

Satan is a Real Character

Last Sunday while attending my childhood home church, I had a flashback of the nine year old me attending Sunday School class there for the first time. My family had moved three times in five years with my dad’s job transfers.  Moves were unsettling, but our first bit of stability in every relocation was finding our local church. That priority kept our faith intact and gave us a place to belong, make new friends, and serve.

In my flashback, I was sitting on a cold metal folding chair learning a memory verse. The teachers were two dear women, Thelma and Wilma.  Thelma used a great memorization technique that made it easy to learn the verse.  She wrote it on the board and each time we read it, she erased one word so we would have to fill in the blank. Twenty iterations later, the verse etched into brain cells so deeply that I can still quote it.

Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeing whom he may devour: [I Peter 5:8]

I had already learned that Satan was real and sneaky and mean as a sly ole fox. But I was also taught not to fear him because I John 4:4 says “Greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world.” So when my nine year old self memorized I Peter 5:8, I didn’t worry that he might devour me, but I knew I had to be vigilant.

I’m no lion expert, but have read of a few interesting prowling habits. Lions usually hunt in the darkness, tending to stalk in dense cover vs. ambushing in the open. They prefer to go for single prey, and sometimes paw their prey from the back to get them off balance before pouncing. If they miss on the first try, they usually abandon that prey.

So part of my daily vigilance against the devil is to stay away from darkness - where I go, what I read, what I watch, and how I think. Another defense is to not do life alone.  Isolation and loneliness leave us vulnerable, but belonging and connecting with other believers helps keep our balance. And whenever I do sense a threat from Satan, I resist him and he flees. James 4:7 instructs: Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. One of the strongest forms of resistance is to quote scripture, just as Jesus did in Luke 4 when Satan tempted Him during His fast. Satan is a deceiver and an accuser (Revelations 12:9-11.) He comes accusing us like an prosecuting attorney, feeding us lies straight from the pit of hell because he is the father of lies (John 8:44.) So we combat him with the word of our heavenly Father, the Father of truth and light.

I don’t believe in giving Satan too much credit by talking about him all the time, so I don’t. But as my Sunday School verse flashed back last Sunday, I realized that we live in a culture today where many view the devil as a fictional character. I’m thankful for the reminder that I still believe he’s real and sneaky and mean.

When I was nine, I believed this because people I trusted told me he was. Now with a few decades of living under my belt, I have seen his ugly destruction firsthand in plenty of prey caught off guard.  And I’ve felt his grubby little paws on my back a few times, trying to push me off balance. He may prowl after me, but he will not devour me. Satan’s a real character, alright. But he’s a snotty-nosed little weakling up against my big Daddy.

If Suitcases Could Talk

Three old suitcases, stacked on each other, serve as a sweet little side table nestled between two chairs in my little cottage. They are family keepsakes and I am fond of finding practical uses for meaningful junk.

The top suitcase with the torn leather corners and the leopard duct taped handle belonged to my adopted grandma and oldest mentor. The inside is lined with a striking turquoise satin. When I was three years old, I traveled with her to fish on the Rio Grande. There she taught me my ABC's as she put worms on her fishing hook. Worms she had grown herself on the back of her toilet tank cover,

disguised in a pink talcum powder box. I don’t remember if she took this particular suitcase on that trip. My sentimental side wants to believe she did.  She often fed her great sense of adventure by taking off with her husband in their pickup truck and traveled the southern United States.

The middle one belonged to my maternal grandmother.  It is crafted from rich leather with heavy top stitching on each seam. A metal plate bears the brand name “Amelia Earhart.” 

How cool is that? The only trips Grandma took were occasional visits to relatives.  By the time I was old enough to remember her visits to our house, she had switched from this leather beauty to a 3 piece matching set of 1960’s gold vinyl suitcases. I shared my bedroom with her when she visited, so she would carefully open her suitcase on my bed and begin to unpack.  She usually had a treat of some kind packed among her prescription bottles. She was quick to get unpacked because “I hate living out of a suitcase.”

The suitcase on the bottom earned its place as the foundation of this three-tiered table.  It is the heaviest and sturdiest, a navy blue metal that sports a few dents and dings from its travels.  It belonged to my dad. He bought it in the early sixties when he began a job which took him “outtatown” as mom always called his work trips. He drove long distances to measure corrosion levels on hundreds of miles of natural gas pipelines. Sometimes he returned at the end of the week with a surprise in his metal suitcase.  He loved a good shoe sale and if he encountered one along his travels, someone in the family was going to get a shoe surprise on Friday afternoon.

I stared at these three suitcases today, wondering about the journeys taken by these two generations before me. Where did they go? What did they pack? With whom did they travel? How long did they stay? What did they do? What sights did they see? What spilled and stained the suitcase lining? What travel tales would be told if these suitcases could talk?

Will my grandchildren feel nostalgic someday about my black soft-side rolling TUMI overhead bag?  The one with a built-in hanging garment compartment that endured years of international travel abuse. It’s definitely not cut out to be an attractive side table. But if they run across it in a dusty attic someday, they might wonder about my untold traveling stories.

What I want them to know is not about the places I ventured. Or the interesting things I did. Or what a light packer I became.

What I want them to know is that I couldn’t go anywhere without God coming along. I tried a few times. But even then, I found that He was still with me. Most of the time, I desperately wanted His company on my journey. King David expressed it like this in Psalm 139:1-10 [NLT]:

O LORD, you have examined my heart

and know everything about me.

You know when I sit down or stand up.

You know my thoughts even when I’m far away.

You see me when I travel

and when I rest at home.

You know everything I do.

You know what I am going to say

even before I say it, LORD.

You go before me and follow me.

You place your hand of blessing on my head.

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,

too great for me to understand!

I can never escape from your Spirit!

I can never get away from your presence!

If I go up to heaven, you are there;

if I go down to the grave, you are there.

If I ride the wings of the morning,

if I dwell by the farthest oceans,

even there your hand will guide me,

and your strength will support me.

Nope, I haven’t gone one single place on this planet without Him. Not because I was such a brilliant traveling companion but because He is omnipresent. Not because I was so faithful in my devotion to Him, but because He cared so deeply for me. Not because I always asked for His guidance, but because His hand refused to back off from me.

Traveling this life with Jesus. It is, indeed, too much to comprehend. And that’s all I really need the next generations to know about my suitcase and me.