June 9thForgiveness in Frustration
A couple of weeks ago my daughter and I ran into a family friend when we were out for a walk. In the course of the conversation, she shared a bullying situation that was happening at her son’s school. My daughter and her son are friends, and though they no longer attend the same school my daughter knows the people involved. As we continued our walk home, we talked about the situation. My daughter couldn’t understand how someone could physically attack the boy in question since she knows him as a sweet and gentle person. I asked her what she thought we could do about it. She said that she would pray for the victim. When I asked her who else we should pray for she immediately thought of her friend, who had reported the incident. Then I asked her about the bully, maybe we should pray for him too. She stopped, and thought about this, I reminded her that Jesus teaches us to pray for our enemies too, and she began to nod her head. “And we don’t know what’s happening in the bully’s life that is making him feel like he needs to act this way, but maybe God can help him,” came the response. We never do know what is happening in the lives of others that might be influencing their behaviour or actions.
As we see story after story of Albertans defying public health orders as the pandemic rages, it is easy to feel that we don’t understand, to wonder how people could act this way. It is not uncommon to get angry about these people who are breaking the law and endangering others by doing so in the name of their rights. It is easy to feel attacked, to think “what about my rights to see my family and friends, to not get sick, to have hospital access if I need it?” It is important in these moments to all remember Jesus words, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” In the words of my daughter, you don’t know what’s going on in these people's lives that is making them act this way. Among Jesus’ words from the cross we hear, “Father forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing”. We usually presume that Jesus is speaking about the soldiers and the crowd cheering for His death, but what if, instead of taking those words to be only directed at those present, we hear those words as the event horizon of Jesus’ saving grace. A plea for forgiveness that reaches across all time and space and applies to every human for all eternity. Maybe instead of anger at people whose actions we don’t understand be they protestors or bullies, we should feel compassion, remember that we don’t know what is going on in their lives, and lift them up in prayer with the same measure of forgiveness that Christ extended and continues to extend to us all.