ONLINE CHURCH BULLETIN

Don These

Colossians 3.12 Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved,  clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and  patience.

13 Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may  have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.

14 And over all  these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.

When God brings so many types of people together into the church, He does so  with perfect knowledge of their differences and imperfections.  While we may  feel a natural affinity toward those who share similar backgrounds and  interests, this has nothing to do with the type of love God commands.  I hope  that this piece written by C. S. Lewis will help us to appreciate what God  expects from His chosen people.

Forgiveness
by C. S. Lewis
Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to  forgive, as we had during the war.  And then to mention the subject at all is  to be greeted with howls of anger.  It is not that people think this too high  and difficult a virtue: it is that they think it hateful and contemptible.   "That sort of talk makes them sick," they say.  And half of you already want  to ask me, "I wonder how'd you feel about forgiving the Gestapo if you were a  Pole or a Jew?"

So do I.  I wonder very much.  Just as when Christianity tells me that I must  not deny my religion even to save myself from death or torture, I wonder very  much what I should do when it came to the point.  I am not trying to tell  you...what I would do--I can do precious little--I am telling you what  Christianity is.  I did not invent it.  And there, right in the middle of it,  I find "Forgive us our sins as we forgive those that sin against us."  There  is no slightest suggestion that we are offered forgiveness on any other  terms.  It is made perfectly clear that if we do not forgive we shall not be  forgiven.  There are no two ways about it.  What are we to do?

It is going to be hard enough, anyway, but I think there are two things we  can do to make it easier.  When you start mathematics you do not begin with  calculus; you begin with simple addition.  In the same way, if we really want  (but all depends on really wanting) to learn how to forgive, perhaps we had  better start with something easier than the Gestapo.  One might start with  forgiving one's husband or wife, or parents or children, or the nearest N. C.  O., for something they have done or said in the last week.  That will  probably keep us busy for the moment.  And secondly, we might try to  understand exactly what loving your neighbor as yourself means.  I have to  love him as I love myself.  Well, how exactly do I love myself?

Now that I come to think of it, I have not exactly got a feeling of fondness  or affection for myself, and I do not even always enjoy my own society.  So  apparently, "Love your neighbor does not mean "feel fond of him" or "find him  attractive."  I ought to have seen that before, because, of course, you  cannot feel fond of a person by trying.  Do I think well of myself, think  myself a nice chap?  Well, I am afraid I sometimes do (and those are, no  doubt, my worst moments) but that is not why I love myself.  In fact it is  the other way around: my self-love makes me think myself nice, but thinking  myself nice is not why I love myself.  So loving my enemies does not  apparently mean thinking them nice either.  That is an enormous relief.  For  a good many people imagine that forgiving your enemies means making out that  they are really not such bad fellows after all, when it is quite plain that  they are.  Go a step further.  In my most clear-sighted moments not only do I  not think myself a nice man, but I know that I am a very nasty one.  I can  look at some of the things my enemies do.  Now that I come to think of it, I  remember Christian teachers telling me long ago that I must hate a man's bad  actions, but not hate the bad man: or, as they would say, hate the sin but  not the sinner.

For a long time I used to think this a silly, straw-splitting distinction:  how could you hate what a man did and not hate the man?  But years later it  occurred to me that there was one man to whom I had been doing this all my  life--namely myself.  However much I might dislike my own cowardice or  conceit or greed, I went on loving myself.  There has never been the  slightest difficulty about it.  In fact, the very reason why I hated the  things was that I loved the man.  Just because I loved myself, I was sorry to  find that I was the sort of man who did those things.  Consequently  Christianity does not want us to reduce by one atom the hatred we feel for  cruelty and treachery.  We ought to hate them.  Not one word of what we have  said about them needs to be unsaid.  But it does want us to hate them in the  same way in which we hate things in ourselves: being sorry that the man  should have done these things, and hoping, if it is anyway possible, that  somehow, sometime, somewhere, he can be cured and made human again.

Dear Father, we are so grateful for the transforming power of Your redeeming  love through Christ.  We rejoice that we can be part of your forever family.   Help us to wear the proper spiritual attire today--to love and forgive the  way You love and forgive--to be like Christ. Help those who are hurting.  We  ask this in the name of Christ, the Merciful One.  Amen.

1 John 5.14 And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask  any thing according to his will, he heareth us:  15 And if we know that he  hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we  desired of him.

Only God can know HOW our prayers WORK but we believe HE answers. Please  write me to add names to the prayer list and to report changes in status.

Let us be thankful and prayerful!

Love
Brad Forgy