Make the coming year about forgiveness

In the new year 2025, I am going to forgive. Forgive what? Forgive whatever comes up — forgive what has already happened. 

My niece gifted a subscription to "Comment” — a quarterly publication dedicated to “public theology for the common good.” I've already harvested enough from the winter issue on “The Call to Forgive” to last me for seasons to come. 

And that is the focus of a feature article, “Forgiving, A Glimpse Of A Farther World.” Forgiving isn't at all natural — ask anyone. But what if it is “God's undefeated purpose for us,” drawing us forward — breaking my fixation with what's gone wrong — and presenting a new story — a “fresh pattern.” 

I liked the mention of Jesus showing His disciples a “farther vision” of forgiveness. How He opens for them a “new and better possibility — because it was never going to come out of what they were making of themselves.” That rough and rowdy group needed transforming — and through an epic struggle infused with the love of God, they got it. 

They left the world their transformational stories — so we stubborn, egotistical, offendable, grudge bearing also-humans could see it can be done. And so we could meet Jesus, their teacher and forgiver. 

This issue of "Comment” includes an anonymous essay titled “Out of the Depths, How Forgiveness Brought a Sex Offender into the Light” — authored “By A Man Who Fell.” Even more profound is its companion piece, “Into the Depths, the Cost of Forgiveness Will Be Your Life” — authored “By A Wife Who Forgave.” When their world blew up, she felt God say to her, “Child, this is the moment I created you for.”   

She understood forgiveness is the “pivotal act that makes a relationship with God possible.” She said, “Forgiveness was the gift I knew to give, because He had given it to me, time and time again.” She also says, “When you choose to forgive, you are choosing the difficult path of steep ascent. I believe God honors that choice and begins refining you as well as the offender. The thing about forgiving someone is that you get extremely close to your own reflection in the mirror — until you are nose to nose.” 

This wife — who lost so much — affirms, “I think that's the secret punch. You think you're doing a great deed for someone else, but really God is doing a great deed in you. He's inviting you to follow His own cruciform path, one where the shadows appear to deepen only to be overwhelmed one day by the most brilliant light. And the more I have followed this path, the more I have found Him equipping me to be a bearer of resurrection, even as He is resurrecting me.” 

It's that “farther vision” — a very real one I can reach for in the power of a forgiving God. An “undefeated purpose” He has created for me — to live in forgiveness. To freely receive it and freely offer it. 

In the new year 2025, I am going to forgive.