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Bear with one another; forgive each other if one of you has a complaint against another. The Lord has forgiven you; now you must do the same. —Colossians 3:13 (NJB)
If mercy were a sin, I believe I could not keep from committing it.—St. Bernard of Clairvaux
Revenge comes easy to us. We chuckle at the bumper sticker that says, “I don’t get mad. I get even.” We like it because it expresses feelings that run deep in our disordered human natures. We often want to damage a person who damages us. When someone cuts us off in traffic, it’s easier to wish him a flat tire than a blessing. Maybe even four flat tires.
But God says no to our desires for vengeance. “For my thoughts are not your thoughts,” he says, “nor are your ways my ways” (Isaiah 55:8). And his thoughts and ways are rich in forgiveness (55:7), which he freely offers and prescribes for us as well. That’s why Jesus required that we forgive those who trespass against us in the prayer he taught us and warned that if we did not forgive them, his Father would not forgive us (see Matthew 6:12, 14-15).
Okay. We can meet this requirement when the offense is trivial. God bless that nasty person who keyed the fender of my new car. But when the offense seems unbearably big, we wonder if we can manage to forgive. The angry faces of the parents of a murdered child stare at me from the pages of the local paper. They are demanding death for the killer. If someone were to take the life of one of mine, I ask myself, would I accept the grace to forgive him?
I find the example of Elisabeth Elliot both instructive and hopeful. In Ecuador in 1956, Stone Age tribesmen killed Jim Elliot, her husband, and four other missionaries. Elisabeth not only forgave Jim’s killers, but she also reached out to them in love. Here’s their story.
Elisabeth had met Jim Elliot while studying at Wheaton College in Illinois in the late 1940s. She connected with him again while both were serving among the Quichua tribe in Ecuador. Elisabeth, a skilled linguist, was translating the New Testament into the Quichua language, and Jim was working to introduce Christianity to the tribe. They were married in Quito, Ecuador, in October 1953, and Valerie, their daughter, was born in February 1955.
In 1950 at a language institute, Jim had learned about the Aucas, a primitive tribe living in the jungles of Ecuador. From that moment, he became consumed with a passion to take the gospel to them. He seized every opportunity to survey the jungle by air, looking for Auca dwellings. He once wrote home, “We were looking for Auca homes, but found nothing… . More and more that tribe is brought before me as a field of labor for my life… . It would take a miracle to open the way to them, and we are praying for that miracle.”
In September 1955, word came from Nate Saint and Ed McCully, two other missionaries, that they had located an Auca settlement. Elisabeth says that from the instant the news arrived, Jim had one foot in the stirrup, ready to go. The men prayed more fervently for a chance to bring the good news to the Aucas. For five months, they made weekly flights over the Auca houses, dropping gifts of machetes, kettles, and ribbons and calling out greetings in the few Auca words they knew. By January 1956, they felt the time was right. Jim and four other men set up camp on the banks of the Curaray River near the Auca settlement. On January 8, the men flew over the Auca houses and invited the natives to meet them on the beach. They spotted ten Auca men heading toward their camp. They radioed their wives about the anticipated meeting. They were supposed to call back at 4:30 p.m. that day. The call never came. The men were found four days later, speared and scattered on the sand.
The story made big but brief news in the United States, including a spread in Life magazine. But the media did not cover the most significant part of the story. After dealing with her grief, Elisabeth forgave the men who had killed Jim. And she did it not only with heartfelt words but with actions. She decided that she would continue her husband’s mission to take the good news to the Auca people, and she prayed for an opportunity to do so. She told a journalist, “The fact that Jesus Christ died for all makes me interested in the salvation of all, but the fact that Jim loved and died for the Aucas intensifies my love for them.”
Two years later, her prayers were answered. Three Auca women who lived among the Quichuas invited Elisabeth to come to the Auca settlement. In October 1958, Elisabeth, her daughter, and Rachel Saint, Nate’s sister, moved to the village where her husband’s killers lived. They stayed in a tiny open hut with hammocks for sleeping and an open pit for cooking. While the two women worked to translate the New Testament into the Auca language, they befriended the people, trying to teach them about God. Eventually a number of Aucas became Christian, including six of the men who had killed Jim and his companions. One of these men became pastor of the Auca church, and another was martyred himself when he tried to take the gospel to another Auca community.
At some point, Elisabeth was reconciled with the man who killed Jim. And as a sign of the reconciliation, he gave her his spear, which she keeps as a cherished memento in her home near Boston.
I know the Christian teaching on forgiveness. I pray the Lord’s Prayer often, forgiving those who have trespassed against me. But when someone offends me, I need something to prompt me to do it. I hope that in the heat of anger and pain, I remember Elisabeth’s example and let God touch me with the grace to forgive.
—Bert
For Reflection:
Is there someone who has hurt you that you have not forgiven? Pray for God’s grace to be able to do so.
There is nothing like forgivness to set you free.
Once you forgive you no longer let the hurt control how you feel. Love will take the place of that hurt in your heart once you forgive.