hope for the broken home

I am a gardener, after my mother’s example.

I remember the simple script, hung by a nail next to the sugar canister: “Bloom where you are planted” -  a red geranium sketched in the bottom left corner. It hung in the five-bedroom house, the one with the father who went to work and the mother who made a home and the children who arrived to her greeting after school. It hung also in the two-bedroom house, the one with the mother who went to work and the children whose keys unlocked a silent kitchen and the father who came on Saturdays.

Both houses were mine. When I was nine years old, my parents’ divorce was final, and our family, like so many others, was left to make sense of the aftermath.

The conference ends and a woman approaches me at the podium. She is on the verge of tears.  She has approached me before – no, not her, but ten others with the same question brimming in the corners of their eyes. I have spoken for almost an hour, but she remembers one passing detail: “You come from a broken home. Thank you for saying it.”

“Broken home” - the term is hers, not mine. A single mother, worried that her children will be consumed by the devastation of her failed marriage, that their trajectory is faithlessness, bitterness and sorrow. She sees me and wants to know: how did you bloom?

What formula I can offer? The fracturing of a marriage can look many ways. There are no hard and fast rules for how to cobble together hope. I can only tell my story, one shaped by three gifts my parents gave.

The first, of course, was a great deal of prayer. On my behalf, across many years.

The second was a great deal of selflessness on the part of both of my parents, and my stepmother as well. All three of my parents gave me permission to love and cherish all three of my parents. They treated one another with mutual respect, both in their words and actions. I was not asked to choose one parent over another. When a marriage fails, the resulting web of relationships is not always made up of honorable people. By the grace of God, mine was. I knew they had deep hurt toward each other, that thirty five years later they still do. But I knew they placed my relationship needs above their own hurt.

The third gift, astonishingly, was a high view of marriage. Who would believe it? But no one in my family would say that divorce is a simple solution to a difficult marriage. It never gets easy, never stops aching, never slips completely into past-tense. It is a measure of absolute last resort. Rather than teach me to hold my marriage lightly, my parents taught me to hold it in high regard, to enter into it with care, to guard it with determination.

An incomplete account, of limited help, but my story nonetheless. I feel deep gratitude toward my parents, somehow able to recognize that just because their marriage was a failure didn’t mean that their divorce had to be. Finding their family planted in rocky soil, they determined, as far as it was possible with them, to help us bloom.

I have been blessed with three devoted parents, but I believe - and have witnessed - that even one devoted parent can foster blooms in the desert. Do I come from a broken home? I do. And so do all of us, I suppose. I have known more love and respect, more kindness, more selfless pursuit of relationship in my “broken home” than many know in their traditional families. Take heart in this, mother in the aftermath – a failed marriage does not doom you to a failed family. No malediction guides your course. Surely the grace of God is for homes both broken and intact. Surely, if any of us blooms, we do so by that grace alone.

I am a gardener, after my mother’s example. And my step-mother’s as well, truth be told. I carry a sentimental attachment to a particular flower, tracing back to my childhood, to a sign on a nail next to a canister of sugar. My yard spills over with geraniums. The Victorians assigned a meaning to that blossom - though other flowers symbolize peace or healing, the geranium symbolizes folly.

A fitting emblem for this child of divorce, this child of God. For it is folly to believe that something whole can come from something broken. Yet God chooses what is foolish in this world to shame the wise. He chooses the weak, the low, the despised. He chooses the broken. And these, against all logic, he redeems. Mother of a “broken home”, lift up your eyes. Find hope in the folly of the gospel - it is for you. Ask the Father to give all that is needful, all that is good.

I pray hope and wholeness bud beneath His care. I pray you and those you cherish bloom.

gazing on the good of good friday

How much pain? For how long? How much blood? How many layers of flesh removed by the lash? How heavy the beam he carried? How far the distance he walked? Between which sinews were the nails placed? How sharp the thorns? How precise the work of the spear? Tell me, was it death by suffocation or blood loss? Show me. Re-enact it. Film it. Paint it. Describe it in song lyric and sacred reading. Carve it in detail and hang it on a wall. Give me the sound, the smell, the spectacle of it. Take me back to those moments, and spare no effort to help me enter into the scene.

Because if I had just been there to see it I would understand - I would understand the extent of my sin and the miracle of the resurrection. Because if I could just register these images and speculations deeply enough in my psyche I might better celebrate the beauty of three-days-later.

But would I? Do I? Or shall I look beyond the suffering of skin, scalp, sinews, suffocation to the harder truth to which they point? Shall I look beyond the stock-in-trade of Good Friday observance, these CSI-worthy musings, capable of capturing only the smallest part of what transpired on the cross? For if I seek to internalize the suffering of Christ, surely I must look beneath the externals. If I seek to internalize the sufferings of Christ, surely I must look to his rejection.

Rejection. I have known it – I have known the visceral shock, the hot-and-cold nausea of learning that another human being believed me guilty of something I had not done, believed it to the core of their understanding, believed it to the exclusion of hearing any defense on my behalf. You hate me. You hate who you think I am. You wish me harm. You have passed your sentence on me. You will not change your mind.

Now it begins to come into view, what happened that day.  It begins to, yes, if I extrapolate the depth of that pain, multiplied out to the nth degree. Rejection to the multi-billionth power. The Passion Play, seen through this lens, begins to feel flat. The crucifix above the altar begins to look like so much wood and pigment. As hard as I gaze, it does not speak of this weight, this crushing weight, so much greater than a timber across the back. As intently as I focus, it does not render the sting of this scourging lash, so much more brutal than a cat-of nine-tails.

But I am not there yet, no – my understanding is not yet as awakened as Good Friday demands. For in my limited experience of human rejection, on the day that my fellow man turns his gaze from me, the loving gaze of my Father does not waver. On the day that my fellow man pronounces me cursed, my Father still shouts that I am blessed.  Blessed to the uttermost.

But not so, the Son. Not so, the sinless Son, rejected to the uttermost.

So my gaze is lifted to the great good of Good Friday: the Father’s face turned eternally toward me because it was turned from the Son. The sinner accepted, the sinless rejected. The punishment that brought me peace, no mere matter of thorn and nail. The curse that brought me blessing, no mere matter of blood and bone.

This Good Friday may the eyes of my body soberly acknowledge the blood and the nails. But may the eyes of my heart gaze on the rejection that secured my acceptance, and glory in the willing death that brought me life.

a table of forgetful remembrance

About a week ago we gathered some “foodie” friends for what is becoming an annual tradition: Mock Thanksgiving. It’s like a dry run for a Thanksgiving that we would never actually serve to our families, an excuse to experiment with a menu that, for most of us, is set in stone for the actual day.

Mock Thanksgiving is a meal of which my mother would not approve, one in which creativity trumps tradition. The standard turkey gives way to an herb-roasted bird stuffed with onions and lemons. Ordinary mashed potatoes are usurped by garlic smashed new potatoes. In place of green beans almandine, oven-roasted Brussels sprouts with cranberries and goat cheese.  And the ultimate desecration (by my mother’s East Coast reckoning): In place of bread stuffing, cornbread chorizo dressing that has never seen the inside of a bird. We dine al fresco on these foods offered to the idols of our culinary creativity, savoring every minute of this forbidden meal, this work of holiday fiction.

As much as I love Mock Thanksgiving, I have to admit that I, too, want Thanksgiving Day to follow its time-honored script. I associate certain dishes with that day and that day alone.  They may not win awards for culinary achievement, but that’s hardly the point - they taste like a homecoming. They are a remembrance of Thanksgivings past, an assembly of recipes faithfully prepared just as some dear relative made them for decades. On this day of remembrance, the very food itself is a remembrance of those who have shaped who we are.

The Bible is full of this idea of meals of remembrance, of sacred repetitions, of significant repasts. It permeates the Passover meal instituted to remind God’s people of their deliverance from slavery in Egypt. Roast lamb, bitter herbs, unleavened bread – reminders to thankfulness and watchfulness and freedom.  It permeates the Lord’s Supper – wine and broken bread – a gathering of the family of believers in which the very food itself is a remembrance of Him who has shaped who we are. Reminders to thankfulness and watchfulness and freedom.

On some level, every gathering of family around a table is a shadow of this idea of remembrance, a time when we recall our collective history, making days like Thanksgiving ones we anticipate with a mix of joy and dread, depending on who will pull up a chair to the feast. Why? Because our collective history is often dotted with land mines – difficult personalities, past hurts, broken relationships. For many of us, our Thanksgiving table will be populated by more than just our current incarnations. We will dine with a host of our past selves, clinging to the hope that familiar recipes will preserve the ties of family until the pie has been served and the door has closed behind the last guest.

Which is why days like Thanksgiving are not merely calls to remembrance but also calls to forgetfulness – no, not the forgetfulness of lost car keys or misplaced TV remotes, but the intentional forgetting of what has gone before, the setting aside of past offenses, the laying down of our claims to restitution for old wounds. We are called to a forgetful forgiveness of others – the kind our Heavenly Father practices toward us – in which we decide not to remember. Though the record of our hurts may never fade from our consciousness, we consciously set it aside. It is a deliberate forgetfulness of the offenses of others and a studied forgetfulness of the sins of our own past – a refusal to let them continue to dictate the course of our decisions and reactions.

This is hard for us. We tend to remember what should be forgotten and forget what should be remembered. We tend to make sacred repetition of the ways we have been harmed, of the ways we have harmed others. Unbelievably, we choose to dine on food sacrificed to the idols of our hurts and failures rather than on the bread of redemption and the wine of forgiveness. Mock Thanksgiving.  And yet, every table where family gathers is an invitation to dine on the forgetful remembrance that has been shown to us in Christ, a chance to embrace and to demonstrate the ministry of remembering what matters and forgetting what does not.

So if your Thanksgiving table threatens not to mirror Rockwellian bliss, consider this recipe of forgetful remembrance as part of your annual gathering:

Remember your Egypt. Remember your bondage to sin. Remember your path to freedom. Remember the deeds of the Lord, ponder his works, meditate on his mighty deeds. Like your Heavenly Father, remember mercy and set aside wrath. Not all at your table have tasted freedom.

Forget your Egypt. Forget the sins you loved more than your freedom. Forget the offenses of others against you. Forget to be angry, defensive, hurt, crippled by that which has come before. Forget as your sins have been forgotten. Not all at your table are capable of asking for mercy. Ladle it with liberality anyway.

What gratitude would flow from this exercise? What thanksgiving?  For those who have dined on the sacred, the Thanksgiving table becomes a feast of forgetful remembrance.  For forgetful remembrance is grace - the taste of a homecoming remembered, the foretaste of a homecoming yet to come. On Thanksgiving years from now when our grandchildren gather to serve this most familiar of meals, may the table still be laid with the flavors of homecoming – may we still be serving the very grace that was served for us, in which all true thankfulness finds its source. 

it's not personal

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Parents, when your young child disobeys, what is your emotional response? Does a screaming fit in Walmart cause you embarrassment? Does the declaration “You’re not my mommy any more” hurt your feelings? Does a refusal to come when called make you angry? 

I want you to write this on a note card and put it on your fridge: “It’s not personal.”

It’s a reminder we need, because the emotions we feel when our kids disobey will directly affect the way we discipline. Before we had children, the idea that a three year old could cause us embarrassment, hurt or anger seemed silly. But once we have them, it can be hard not to read their disobedience as evidence of our failure as a parent. But the disobedience of a small child is not personal – it’s just the product of immaturity. And our reaction to it will either reinforce or retrain the behavior.

Children, like the rest of us, are usually looking for a way to elevate their wills above those in authority over them. They don’t want to submit to the authority of a parent, a teacher or a caregiver unless that person’s will aligns with theirs. In other words, as long as Mom wants what I want, the day will go smoothly. As soon as Mom wants something different that what I want, I will employ whatever means of influence I have to bring her back to my agenda. What means of influence are available to a young child? His weapons are few but effective, and they fall into two categories: verbal and physical.

His verbal arsenal includes (but is certainly not limited to) whining, yelling, arguing, backtalk and good, old-fashioned crying. His physical arsenal includes (but is certainly not limited to) hitting, throwing, running away, door-slamming, refusal to hand-hold or hug, and my personal favorite: the full body-flop, usually executed in the middle of a grocery store aisle in front of as many onlookers as possible.

Children like to combine verbal and physical weapons for even greater effectiveness, and I do not have space here to illustrate the glorious near-infinite spectrum of disobedience that can occur. But the unlimited number of disobedient scenarios is not the point. The limited number of parental reactions is. Parents, when faced with a screaming flopper, you have a choice: will you take this personally and respond out of anger or hurt, or will you hold the parental high ground and respond out of love? Your child will come to the battle of wills fully armed. Your response will determine whether she is armed with a sniper rifle or a squirt gun.

Anger is our natural emotional response to having our will violated. Anger, in its initial state, is not sinful. Acting out of anger almost always is. Your child yells or throws a fit because she is angry her will has been violated by yours. If you respond by acting in anger (yelling back or punishing to “even the score”), you show her that her angry behavior is valid, acceptable, and even “adult”. You actually reinforce the negative behavior and prolong the learning process - even if you follow through with an appropriate consequence.

Do the compassionate thing: disarm your child by remaining calm in conflict and responding with emotionally neutral speech and facial expressions. Children are smart and observant. Though they may not have begun a behavior to manipulate you, they will quickly pick up on its manipulative power by watching your response. If you yell, lecture, or act wounded in any way they will sense the power of their actions to control you. This is a power a responsible parent does not give to her child. A parent who takes her child's disobedience personally risks reinforcing not only her child’s emotional immaturity, but her own as well.

So be the bigger person. Be the parent. Don’t be lured into an emotional battle by a small person who can’t fight fair. Teach your young child that conflict cannot be escalated by hurtful words or actions. Do this by keeping anger out of the equation. Set it aside. And in so doing, model the loving correction we receive from our Heavenly Father who has set aside His anger toward His children.

And save that “It’s not personal” note card on the fridge. It just might come in handy in case adolescence rings your doorbell in full battle regalia.

For more thoughts on training young children in obedience, listen here.

Related post: Civility in the Christian Home

wormwood and gall

A young woman asked me to meet with her recently to help her learn how to deal with bitterness. She had suffered harm at the hands of a fellow believer in the form of hurtful accusations and outright hypocrisy. Though months had gone by she found that bitterness toward this person kept creeping back into her thinking.

I could relate. Several years back I found myself in a similar situation when my integrity was called into question unjustly by a fellow believer. I had always thought that the enemies Jesus commanded me to love were people I labeled as such, either because they were unbelievers or because they drove me crazy. I believed an enemy was someone I chose. Most days I didn't have anyone on that list. Suddenly I found myself confronted with the truth that my enemy could choose me, out of the blue, as I went about my life - that despite my best efforts to live at peace with all men, someone could still choose to walk in enmity toward me. And that someone could even be a believer. This was a new kind of hurt for me, the kind that tempted me to drink deeply of bitterness.

Here is what I wanted during that time: I wanted my adversary to be brought to justice. I wanted my side of the story to be heard and my hurt to be acknowledged. I wanted to be vindicated in front of those who had heard my integrity questioned – not tomorrow or next year – today.

That’s not what happened. Because God is better to me than I deserve, no opportunity came for any of those wants to be met. And in that season of wormwood and gall He taught me truths I would otherwise never have sought. Here are a few bitterness-barring realizations I learned to cling to:

Realization 1: God knows the real story. Every justification I wanted to raise was already known to God. Every misconception I wanted to correct was not misconceived by God. He knew both sides of the story perfectly, and more importantly He knew the truth that lay somewhere between. My sense of urgency to clear my name was misplaced and self-reliant. So instead of fighting to make my side of the story known, I learned to let my words be few. And I asked God to show me where I had shaded the truth to mollify my hurt or downplay my own sin.

Realization 2: God sees the heart of my adversary. God sees my heart. As my hurt blossomed I began to take comfort in the knowledge that, if God’s word can be trusted, one day my adversary’s sin would be called to light. I found peace in knowing justice would eventually be served, even if not in this lifetime. It took awhile for me to realize that on that day my own sin would also be fully revealed. We can all rely on the Just Judge to do His job. One day my adversary’s sin will be known, and so will mine. On that day I will cling to the mercy of my Savior. I will beg for it, though I do not deserve it. If I do less than this for my adversary I am a hypocrite of the highest order. So instead of taking comfort that justice would be served, I began praying for my enemy to receive mercy.

Realization 3: I have caused hurt as well. I may have done nothing to deserve this particular hurt, but I have certainly caused similar hurt (known and unknown) for others. So instead of feeling superior to my adversary, I began to develop empathy for them. And I began asking God to show me my own sins against others.

There is only one person who has ever suffered unjustly in the purest sense, and that is Christ. The rest of us may indeed be wronged by another, but never without the guilt of having caused harm ourselves at some point in our lives. So when we suffer unjustly, insofar as that is humanly possible, we can be instructed by the way in which Christ endured. When falsely accused and convicted by his own people, he remained silent. 1 Peter 2 says he “continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly.” When at last he did speak (after the unjust verdict had been passed) it was to cry out not against, but on behalf of his oppressors.

Think about this: At no time are we more like Christ than when we suffer unjustly at the hands of those who should have loved us best. We claim that we want to be conformed to the image of the Son. What if it takes this kind of suffering to accomplish just that? So instead of asking why God would let this injustice happen, I began asking Him to use every bit of the hurt to mold me into the likeness of the Savior.

Realization 4: I must refuse the bitter cup. The Bible speaks of our times of hard trial as seasons of wormwood and gall, of bitter herb and bile, times that leave us with the lingering taste of resentment in our mouths if we drink deeply of their vintage. Perhaps the greatest temptation in a bitter season is to drink in the gall that besets us, to take it into our very souls and harbor it there, crying for justice to be done.  Bitter trial may surround us, but we need not internalize its acid sting. We can choose to refuse the bitter cup when it is brought to our lips.

We see a picture of this truth at Golgotha. As the death sentence passed on him by those who should have loved him best was carried out, Jesus cried out in thirst and was offered gall to quench it. He turned his face away. Scholars are divided on why this is so. Either the cup was offered to mercifully shorten his life by poisoning him or it was offered as an analgesic to lessen his physical anguish. But Christ was unwilling to shorten or diminish his appointed suffering by the smallest amount. He had come single-mindedly to do the will of the Father. In the bitterest trial of his incarnation, Christ refused the cup of bitterness raised to his lips.

You and I mistakenly believe that drinking deeply of bitterness will satisfy our hurt, but Christ has shown us the better way. In all suffering the cup of gall will be offered to our lips. We who have drunk from the cup of Life must seek no comfort in that caustic drink. Like Christ, we must refuse it. The bitter thirst of injustice is only quenched with the Living Water of the gospel. In our seasons of wormwood and gall may we drink deeply and often from its streams, exchanging bitterness for the hope and portion of steadfast love, of mercies that never come to an end – for us and for our offenders.

Remember my affliction and my wanderings, the wormwood and the gall!

My soul continually remembers it and is bowed down within me.
But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope:
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.
“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.”
Lamentations 3:19-24

the gospel in a green felt coat

Remember Magic Eye? Those fuzzy pictures that, if you stared at them long enough, would suddenly form into a razor-sharp 3-D image? I loved those. Okay, I hated them. I’m pretty competitive when it comes to games, and for some reason my eyes just couldn’t compete with those of…well, let’s just say for example, my husband. Who is also a little competitive. We’d stand side by side in WalMart staring at those things, our grocery shopping completely forgotten, my adrenaline surging with every passing second as I knew Jeff was getting closer and closer to seeing what my brain could not hurry to sort out.

Him: Jet plane!...Dragon!....Niagra Falls!...Porpoise!

Me:  Porpoises are stupid. Can we go now?

Apparently, the trick was to keep your focus off of any individual point and gaze at the whole picture. Apparently I was no good at that.

But I think I’m getting better.

Yesterday my Friday took an unexpected turn when I had to take one of the dogs into the vet for a bladder infection. Which is bad on so many levels, but I’ll spare you the journey that brought us to the point of actually seeking medical attention. My bad attitude may or may not have lengthened that journey. I’ll just leave that part out as well.

So I’m sitting there sulking when I get a text from one of two friends who were out to lunch celebrating their birthdays together, presumably not smelling like dog. Here is the exchange that followed:

Friend: Where are you?

Me (initial response): At the vet hemorrhaging money.

Me (edited, actual response): At the vet doing my duty to unconditional love and companionship.

Friend: We’re coming to see you. Don’t leave. You’ll want to see us.

Me (initial response): What beverages came with Birthday Lunch? Are you in a limo wearing sombreros?

Me (edited, actual response): I’m in the exam room. Coming here would be weird. Oh, and Happy Birthday!

Friend: Too bad, we’ll be there in 5. It’s going to feel like YOUR birthday!

Sure enough, five minutes later two pretty heads with enormous grins popped around the door of the exam room where I was sitting covered in dog fur grouchily waiting my turn to get fleeced. And now, apparently, embarrassed, too.

It took me a minute to register that no one was wearing sombreros.

And then my sweet friends handed me a gift bag containing perhaps the loveliest green felt winter coat ever constructed, in just my size. They had seen it in a boutique after lunch and had immediately thought of me because it was my favorite color. They wanted to bless me with it. And my birthday wasn’t for five more months.

We’ve established that I shop in places where they sell giant Magic Eye posters, so let’s just say a coat of this quality and style was not in my future. Not even a little bit. And with all the dog shenanigans, I hadn’t quite nailed down birthday gifts for the two actual birthday girls. So I stood there empty-handed and misty-eyed in a place I hadn’t wanted to be trying on a coat that should never have been mine on a day that should not have been special from friends who should never have come and found me at all.

And it took me until five o’clock to see the Magic Eye. (I said I was getting better, but I’m still pretty slow.) Suddenly, in the midst of all the incongruous pieces of my day, there it was – razor sharp and 3-D: the gospel in a green felt coat, the gospel in my clear-eyed, joy-laden, openhanded friends on an interrupted day in an unexpected place. For surely Christ, on a day that shouted his glory, set it aside to come find me in much the same way – me, with my bad attitude and my hands empty of gifts – and gave me a garment I could never afford, dearly purchased, joyfully.

What kindness to have been given friends like mine. What mercy to have been given the friendship of Christ. For certainly the truest friend is the one who lives out the gospel for the sheer joy of it and for the glory of the Father. The gospel imbues the very canvas of the believer's life on the average day and the exceptional day, but one needs a steady gaze to trace it. God grant us eyes to see.

full forgiveness

After studying the story of Lot last week, I have come to face an ugly truth: I’m not as good at forgiving as I thought.

Here’s what bothers me about Lot: He spends several chapters in Genesis edging closer and closer to a sinful lifestyle until at last we find him sitting at the gate of Sodom as a city leader. He is the epitome of recklessness, gambling on living shoulder to shoulder with depraved people, seemingly thoughtless as to the consequences for himself and his family. He calls Sodom’s mob “brothers”, offering his virgin daughters up to them to be gang-raped. He has to be dragged out of the city before it is consumed. His wife dies because she is too entangled in the lifestyle Lot provided for her. He wheedles and begs God’s messengers. His story ends in a cave where his daughters reveal the toll of having been raised in Sodom by committing incest with him.

He’s a dirtbag. But if 2 Peter is to be believed, he’s a dirtbag who was positionally righteous before God. Saved. Redeemed. Which means I’ll be spending an eternity with him in heaven. That makes me crazy. Not the saved part - I’m okay with Lot getting into heaven - I understand that God gives all of us unmerited grace. I just don’t want to have to see Lot, hang out with Lot, befriend Lot. He is someone who had saving faith, yet continued to live a life that harmed himself and others in the extreme. He can come to heaven, but I don’t want to be around him.

I tell myself that I’m pretty good at forgiving other believers who offend me. Most people, by the time they hit adulthood, have at least a short list of people who have hurt them deeply. I am no exception. I have prayed over my list repeatedly, asking God to kill any bitterness that might begin or recur. I have asked Him to give me the heart of Christ, who taught even as he died that those who harm us do not know what they are doing. I don’t dwell on past hurts. But my reaction to Lot, whose offenses were not committed against me, has forced me to examine my feelings toward other Christians, whose offenses were.

My attitude to the Lots on my list has been “I forgive you. I just don’t want to be around you.” Out of sight, out of mind, off the list. Living in big cities and attending big churches has made this a formula that has not been hard to follow. But it is a coward’s forgiveness that I have offered my fellow believers. The reality is that one day I will stand shoulder to shoulder in heaven with them, praising the same God for the same grace. If I cringe at the thought of having to see my offenders there, I have not forgiven completely. And I have downplayed to myself my own need for forgiveness from God and others. I am someone’s Lot as well – who dreads having to meet me in heaven?

Our Lord looks eagerly to the day that His offenders will join Him for eternity. He does not cringe at the thought. He has set aside His wrath toward us. Completely. I pray that I would forgive as I have been forgiven – freely and to the uttermost. That I would not wait until heaven to turn loose the last of my hurt, to seek fellowship with my Lots. And that one day I would joyfully and willingly sing with my offenders, with Lot, and with those whom I have offended:

Grace, grace, God's grace, grace that will pardon and cleanse within;
Grace, grace, God's grace, grace that is greater than all our sin!