Forgive and Live

This life is like mountains to climb.  Not one mountain, but several mountains.  A plethora of mountains over the lifespan.  Look at that scenario and it’ll knock you down every time.  Just one mountain itself is too much.  But take it as one step up the grade at a time and it’s doable.  That’s life, and that’s the only way life works.

Likewise, though seemingly unconnected, if we don’t forgive, we don’t live.  If we cannot forgive, we cannot live.  Forgiveness is a mountain, and we attain life one step up the grade at a time as we maintain our attitude of grace toward others and situations that grieve us.

Forgiveness is Wise – it is “yes” in life

Forgiveness is like gradually climbing one mountain at a time.  Forgiveness is a one-wise-decision-at-a-time activity.  Forgiveness is a choice to say “yes” to the right way to live, to another chance, to affirm a precious creature, to life itself. 

Forgiveness is the epitome of wisdom itself.

Nothing else like it fortifies our lives for life.

We cannot control a large degree of what life throws at us.  And life will overwhelm us if we let it — if we take it as a bunch of huge Everests before us (which is what it really is).

But what we can do, and that which is wise, is to take each step with good grace, chin up, looking each climbing step in its eye as we stride with straightforward belief — “I can do this one thing right in front of me with my ‘yes’.”  I can, and therefore I do.

Each step in life is either a “yes” or a “no”.  Each succeeding “yes” is a pass to a higher grade.  But each “no” is an indecisive pause at best — or it can be a backward step that debilitates our ascendency up the grade.  Importantly, to forgive yet to also take steps to step wisely away from danger is a very nuanced and poignant “yes” — a “ninja yes” if you like.  The paradox of life is there are times when it is only “NO” — that “NO” is indeed a “ninja yes”.  We forgive but we depart.

Forgiveness is a metaphor for life because
it is the prized pinnacle of yeses.

Forgiveness is good for us

When we forgive, we say “yes” to faith, a risk to believe for a better future, for trust to be given another chance.  And whether trust dies on that mountain because the choice to forgive falls foul to betrayal or not, the choice to forgive is GOOD for the forgiver.

But just as forgiving is a “yes” at its defined step up the grade of the mountain, the choice to keep moving upward in belief for better or to dwell on the betrayal is also a choice of “yes” or “no”.  Although that might seem hard.  Although the choice to dwell on the betrayal seems justified, it is not.  To dwell on the betrayal is a “no”.

Forgiveness is always first and foremost a test for OUR character, not a test of the other person’s character whom we’re forgiving. 

Whether they will honour our forgiveness is THEIR test.  Whether they have the character to reciprocate (their forgiveness of us does not equate to them trusting us).  But that they fail or succeed their test is irrelevant to us. 

If their choice to honour or betray us affects us,
the integrity of our forgiveness remains questionable.

Our forgiveness of anyone or any situation must stand a momentous test.  It always does.  This is a constant throughout life, at every forgiving step at those defined grades.

When we determine that the truth is “forgiveness is good for us,” we align to a universal truth of God — something that never changes whether we believe or not (so we might as well believe!) — we stand on what many phrase as “the right side of history” (however controversial a term that is). 

It means that whether our forgiveness is honoured or betrayed, we stood soundly before our own test and were found true, guiltless, integral, without case to answer. 

We stand by our choice to forgive — wise by its own decree.  The proof of which was and is our integrity to say “yes” when we were required to choose “yes” or “no”.

EACH STEP, A TEST, TO SAY “YES”

Each step up the grade of the present mountain we are on is a test.

If we know it’s a test, and we know that passing it is doable, that all we need to do is say “yes” (and forgiveness is the epitome of the range of choices open to us), we pass.

Each step, each “yes,”
each forgiveness, is a pass,
another step up the mountain. 

And life is full of steps,
of yeses, of choices to forgive.

At differing points along the upward road of life we come to junctures that seem impossible to climb — we see no other way, but the present way seems impossible, but there is always a way.

Especially at these points of our journey, where the test seems impossible, a poignant “yes” is required.  This takes fortitude backed in an attitude that leaves only room for “yes”.

To say “yes” when it feels impossible
is the very nexus of faith,
and it is the wisdom of life.

Yes, to forgive and live.

Forgive and live.