"Let your daily actions witness: Christ will come again"

Colossians 3:13

13 Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. 

The Church is not made up of perfect people. Instead, the church is made up of people who are sinners just like everybody else in the world. The church also has its fair share of irritating and difficult people, just like every group in the world is. We have arguments and disagreements, harsh things are said, bad things are done to each other.

In the church we bear with each other. We learn to live with people who are difficult – because we recognize that we too are difficult. We learn to live with people with whom we disagree on many things – because we share only one thing our common commitment to Jesus Christ.

Within the body of Christ, the church, we keep short accounts. That is, we offer forgiveness to those who do things we complain about. Instead of complaining and being drawn deeper into our unhappiness and complaint, we choose each day to live into the patterns of the coming kingdom which includes forgiving each other.

Forgiveness infuses the life of the kingdom that God is bringing into being. At the center of Jesus’ life stands forgiveness that he offers to those who killed him. Forgiveness is a hall-mark of his teaching, reminding us to forgive those in the church who wrong us – not seven times; but seventy-seven times. And Jesus has forgiven us – forgiven our betrayal of his values; forgiven the disrespectful ways we have spoken of others; forgiven our breaking relationship with God, with others, with ourselves, and with the creation.

Having been forgiven, we offer forgiveness to others, not out of our ability, but out of the hope of the coming kingdom of God. Forgiveness becomes a central part of our daily lives as we live towards the patterns and practices that will be our way of life when Christ will come again.        

PRAYER:

Lord Jesus, in you we find forgiveness and we rejoice. Shape our lives each day to be people who not only know that we are forgiven, but who also forgive others. In Jesus’ name. Amen.