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Key Bible Verse: Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful (Luke 6:36). Bonus Reading: Colossians 3:12-14

Great leaders make forgiveness an essential part of the job. Consider Abraham Lincoln. He was compassionate. Donald T. Phillips, in Lincoln on Leadership, highlights that characteristic by pointing out that Lincoln was always quick to pardon. Whenever he had doubts—and he must have had many—he fell back on the foundations of his personality: honesty, integrity, compassion and mercy. He seemed to have virtually no feelings of hate, vindictiveness or malice.

Many people of his day, in fact, thought his tendency toward leniency was overdone. He granted more pardons, for example, than any president had before him or has since. Lincoln kept warrants for execution, marked "cowardice in the face of the enemy," pigeonholed in the desk in his office and referred to them as his "leg cases." "If almighty God gives a man a cowardly pair of legs, how can he help their running away with him?" he asked.

We have a theological term for Lincoln's activity: grace: Grace means unmerited favor. God does for us what we do not deserve and cannot repay. God snatches us from a barren place and places us at His table to partake of its bounty. To whom can you show compassion and grace today?

—Douglas M. Cecil in Life@Work

1. When someone offends, be it a large or small offense, how do you respond? Can your life be described as Lincoln's was?

Thought to Apply: As we grow in wisdom, we pardon more freely.

—ANNE-LOUISE-GERMAINE DE STAEL (19TH CENTURY)

Credits: Adapted from—Friday: Life@Work (7-8/99)

Copyright © 2000 by the author or Christianity Today International/Men of Integrity. For reprint information call 630-260-6200 or e-mail mail@menofintegrity.net.
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