I’ve really started to enjoy reading Gideon his bedtime stories now that he’s a little bit older. Last night's (like most) was relevant for all of us as well. Thought I would share:
(From: The Bible Story by Arthur S. Maxwell Volume
Seventy Times Seven
Does your brother, or sister, tease you a lot? Do you feel sometimes that you cannot take any more?
What would Jesus do if He were in your place?
Let’s ask the Prince of teachers and see what He says.
Listen: “If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him; and if he sins against you seven times in the day, and turns to you seven times, and says, ‘I repent’, you must forgive him.”
Seven times! you say. What a lot of times!
But no. When Peter came to Jesus and asked how many times he should forgive his brother, and whether seven times was the limit, Jesus said he was to go on forgiving him “until seventy times seven.”
How many times is that? Four hundred and ninety!
Why, you say, I couldn’t keep count of all those times. Of course you couldn’t! And Jesus knew that perfectly well when He said it. He doesn’t keep account of the number of times He forgives us.
Four hundred and ninety times would mean once a day for more than a year!
Have you ever tried forgiving anybody that many times? If not, and you are feeling angry with somebody right now, get a notebook and a pencil and start writing. First, put down all the things this somebody has done to upset you. Next, write “forgiven” across the list. Then put a check mark beside that precious word every time you tell that person you forgive him when he annoys you again.
By the time you have made twenty or thirty check marks that somebody will probably be your best friend. Try it and see. Even the meanest people can’t resist pure love like that.
Forgiving is part of God’s better way, the way of love, which Jesus can from heaven to reveal to us.
Forgiving someone over and over again - fifty times, a hundred times, four hundred and ninety times - is love in action, love at its best and grandest, love reaching out to another hear with all its healing, winning power.
We can never hope to belong to Christ’s kingdom of love if we do not know how to forgive people who do us wrong. He couldn’t afford to let us in. We’d be having trouble with somebody in no time at all.
“Forgive... as we forgive,” we pray every time we say the Lord’s Prayer. But how do we forgive? Just a little bit? Just once now and then? Just when we feel in the right mood? We wouldn’t want God to forgive us like that.
No, Jesus wants us to be so full of His love that a forgiving spirit will come naturally. We will never take offense. No matter what anybody says or does to us, we will go on loving him jus the same.
So important is it that we have this forgiving spirit in our hearts that Jesus said that if we take a gift to church and, on getting there, remember that a brother is upset with us for some reason or other, we are to forget the gift and find the brother. “First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift,” He said.
To Jesus, a loving, forgiving spirit is much more important than money. He would far rather we make peace with an old enemy than give a big donation to a church building fund.
So we had better start forgiving right away. Think! Is there someone you should forgive today?
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