Looking for a poem online ( because my own collection of Elizabeth Jennings' poems is at home) I Googled the line "Forgiveness – the word we live by". Still the mighty Google couldn't give me the poem I want. So it made a polite suggestion that maybe I meant something else. "Did you mean 'Forgiveness – the world we live by'?"
Oh well, yes! And no. But Oh my Lord, Yes! The insertion of one letter magnifies the entire idea of forgiveness into one that has global consequences, worldwide opportunities to begin again, intimations that at last, spears might yet become pruning hooks.
So I said the Lord's Prayer in the Office this morning ( the prayer cycle not my College study – though I say the Lord's Prayer there too) with knowing smirk at the subversion of that word, 'forgive', its potential to change a world, whether my inner world of resentments and walls of remembered hurt, or that big world out there where Gaza, Israel, Syria, Afghanistan, and any other elsewhere where dividing walls of hostility still contradict the peace made by the blood of the cross.
Your will be done…our daily bread…as we forgive our debtors….deliver us from evil….for thine is the kingdom, and your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as in heaven. No wonder that prayer holds countless gigabytes of the truths and realities by which the world lives.
Forgiveness – the word we live by. Forgiveness – the world we live by. So that forgiveness isn't the occasional giving in to our better nature and letting go the odd grudge – it is a way of life, and the way to life.
The photo is from Minsteracres Retreat Centre – "God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself."
Leave a Reply