Seventy Times Seven

I stood in church yesterday, singing and worshipping at one level, but wrestling at another, trying to be a good soldier and take captive the enemy thoughts.  I was battling feelings of betrayal and rejection. 

It was the most innocuous, indirect kind of rejection you can imagine; I would be too embarrassed to detail in a blog, and yet my mind kept wandering back to it and my body responded in clenched jaw and knotted gut. 

"Let it go," I told myself over and over.  "Forgive.  Forgive.  Forgive.  You are here to commune with the God of the universe who humbles Himself to dwell in you, and you are fixated on the ridiculous." Yet all morning those viral thoughts invaded. 

I think I understand what Jesus meant when he told Peter in Matthew 18, "No, you don't forgive your brother seven times.  You forgive him seventy times seven."  In other words, as many times as it takes to let it go.  Every time the angst rises up, you stamp it "forgiven."  It's not that a brother or sister is going to break your heart 490 times.  It's that your mind is going revisit the hurts over and over and you are going to close your eyes, take a deep breath, and call it forgiven.  Every.  Time. 

Until the healing comes.  And what does the healing look like?  It looks like you walking in his or her shoes, changing your point of view and finally, understanding. 

It is you moving beyond this offense and praying that all those people that you have offended would be kind enough to stamp "forgiven" across every thought of you.