I sat across the table from him but could not look him in the eye. The silence now lay heavy in the room. Friends now enemies. How did it ever get to this place?
Years ago, we met. Both just entering into apprenticeship. On the surface, we seemed to be exact opposites. Billy was blond, blue-eyed and almost had a movie star quality about him. I was tall and lanky with long hair and looks so dark I was often mistaken for a Native American. But our friendship formed around our work ethics and competition to be the best in our class. We could often be found after shop time in the local bar downing boilermakers. Brothers in arms, so to speak.
Over the years we drifted apart. I traveled following the work and Billy stayed closer to home but we never lost contact. I knew he had married into the business, his wife’s father a manager of Butler Building, Billy was running a lot of the local work for that group. I was jumping from one company to the next but had made a decent reputation as a man who knew his trade.
Now years later, here he was in Utah working for me and not explaining how that had happened. One thing for sure the years had changed us both. He was divorced, that much he had told me, and I was just out of my second marriage. Drinking and drugs had also taken their toll, we both were cynical and world worn.
The trouble had started over a simple matter. Billy had refused to do the work I had assigned to him and instead had done things that I felt was slowing the project. Soon he was causing other problems with the crew and that led to our first confrontation but it settled nothing. All continued to deteriorate until last night I fired him. Now we sat across from one another. To my surprise, he asked for forgiveness and his job back, explaining how things had gone wrong in his life. I heard none of it. Unwilling and unable to forgive.
Forgiving people who wronged me, imagined or real was the most difficult thing I had to come to grips with when I accepted Jesus as my Savior. Yeah, I could love others on the surface, that is as long as they did not slight me in any way or do something in which I took offense. If they did, I might not show it, because after all, I was a Christian now, but it would eat at me.
To tell you the truth for years I had no answer to this one, until one day I heard an argument between two Christian brothers outside the church on a Sabbath morning. My indignation rose, how dare these guys do this on God’s day! But suddenly, I saw me in that argument. It was all about how one person felt slighted by another. How many times would I have liked to say those words to someone when I felt that way. I saw my sin and was ashamed.
Jesus says this, “If you forgive others the wrongs they have to you, your Father in heaven will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive the wrongs you have done.” (Matthew 6:14-15) This verse came up in my devotionals during that next week and on top of that I read this in the teaching of Ellen White a few days later, “When we come to ask mercy and blessing from God we should have the spirit of love and forgiveness in our own heart. How can we pray, ‘Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors,’ and yet indulge in an unforgiving spirit?” (A Call to Stand Apart, Chapter 7-How to Pray) Do you think our God was trying to tell me something? I sure did. How could I, a sinner in so many ways, ask God for His forgiveness if I walked around all day holding grudges? Simple answer, I could not.
I wish I could say from that point I never had an unforgiving heart, but that would not be true. The difference is now that when I see what is going on, I have a recourse that never fails. A prayer to remind me that forgiveness is God’s business not mine. We call it the Lord’s Prayer: Our Father who art in heaven hallowed by thy name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For Thine is the power and the glory. Amen. I say it when I feel that old feeling, it works!
I did not forgive Billy, we parted enemies and I have not talked to him since. Like many I wronged in my lost years I have sought his forgiveness in prayer and maybe someday in person. My prayer for us all today is that with all the violence we see around us, that we will remember what our Savior said, as He hung on that cross. Our sins and the sins of the world were breaking His heart yet His words were of love and forbearance, “Father forgive them for they do not know what they do…” May we all have His love and His forbearance with one another today.
Blessings John
8/18/17
Forgiveness…a tough lesson
