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Please forgive me. Please love me. The food of community in a hungry world. The building blocks of relationship, these interactive invitations, can create peace or war depending on how they are used. Is there such a thing as an enemy when forgiveness and love rule our lives? Can’t they set us free to live beyond hurt and self hatred? Jesus said in John 15:12-13: "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends.” Our fear of death can cause a desperation for self preservation, but if everyone is saving themselves, how can we hear and heal our brother or sister who is dying before our eyes? If I am willing to lay down my life, my reputation, my agendas, my need to be right all the time, etc., then I discover a greater power to love and forgive. But we all know that we don’t really trust each other, especially the stranger, and we make enemies by our need to be in control. Love and forgiveness is trampled under the warriors of self-justification and selfishness as we proclaim, “kill or be killed.” If Christ came to save the world, then how can we dole out forgiveness and love only to those deemed worthy? We are all unworthy! If we can love and forgive because God first loved and forgave us, then how can we be so arrogant to believe that we have the keys to the storehouse of grace? We who are of a faith of such hope, how can we stand idly by while individuals, families, nations, and fellow believers starve from lack of grace? It is wrong to think of love and forgiveness in terms of the law of supply and demand, which treats forgiveness and love as some kinds of commodities to be rationed out or left rotting in the storehouses of our temples of stone. Dear world, forgive such conceit and forgive such covetousness. For we see the hunger and store up treasures for ourselves while you starve and seek other ways of love. Pray for us, who find it hard to ask your forgiveness and love in the face of such a struggle. To you, father, mother, child, friend, enemy, invisible and outcast, I forgive you, I love you, please forgive me, please love me! |
Dear God, open our hearts to broadcast the seeds of forgiveness and love
in a barren world. Humble us and open our minds and mouths to
follow the self-sacrificial One who gave life and death without withholding
even one drop of blood nor one word of forgiveness and love. How
can we say that we know what we are doing in this world unless we first humble
ourselves before God and realize the greatest gift of life to our dying lives?
I forgive you. I love you. Please forgive
me. Please love me. I speak this to my children as I survey the world that I will leave them after I am gone. I speak this to the earth as I realize how I abuse the environment. I speak this to the forgotten and oppressed in places like Africa and under the bridges of America as I live my life in a suburban denial. Please forgive me. Please love me. These I cry, as I realize my poverty and my ignorance to a world that wants to do more than just survive. A world that hungers and thirsts for a Savior to come and set it free from bondage to the oppression of death. And here I stand at the foot of an empty cross and in front of an empty tomb that echoes 2000 years,“I love you and I forgive you. Don ’t just stand there. Go to those still crucified and suffering, those who are in bondage and dying in a tomb of fear. How dare you sell tickets and hold a private party for what I have made so public. Yes, I love you and I forgive you, now go and love them and forgive them for the sake of resurrection hope! You are Easter people for a world stuck in Good Friday! I saved the world to live through my gift of forgiveness and love, and if you do not live this gift, how will they know how to live? For Christ ’s sake!” John 4:16-21 says, When [Jesus] came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17 and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: 18 "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." 20 And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21 Then he began to say to them, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing." Go and do likewise.
Pastor Kovitch |
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