Page 2 of 2Forgiveness and Understanding
Leviticus 17:11 says "the life of the body is in the flesh and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one's life." I have to have someone forgive me in order to forgive others. The Giver of the Gift knows what that is all about (Eph. 4:31-32; Luke 23:34). It was he who said "Father forgive them. They know not what they do." And the apostle Paul pointed out that "There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" (Rom. 8:1). If it says no condemnation that means I don't even have a right to condemn myself. That is amazingly freeing. This Gift of God enables us to forgive ourselves and others.
But this Gift also lets us know we are understood. Hebrews 4:15 tells us that Jesus was tempted in every way people are tempted. He can identify with us.
Think of it this way. God gave his law from Mount Sinai but the people at that time could legitimately feel, "You don't know what it's like. You're up there on the mountainside making pontifications about how people are to live. But you don't know what it's like in this world. You don't know my boss. You don't know my family. You don't know my situation."
But because of Christ's entrance into the world, no one can ever say "God, you don't know how I feel." He even knows how it feels to have hay scratching his back and how it feels to be born in the humblest of circumstances. Talk about hope! God does something differently than man expects. You expect a king to be born in a palace, not a stable.
The Man and the Birds
It was Paul Harvey who made popular "The Man and the Birds," a simple illustration to help us understand the Gift. He told the story of a kind, decent man who was generous to his family and upright in his dealing with others, but he just didn't believe all that Incarnation stuff that the churches proclaim at Christmas time. He just couldn't swallow the Jesus story about God coming to earth as a man.
So he told his wife he wasn't going to church with her on Christmas Eve. Shortly after the family drove away, snow began to fall. Minutes later he was startled by thudding sound, then another, and another. When he went to the front door to investigate, he found a flock of birds huddled miserably in the snow. They had been caught in the storm and in a desperate search for shelter tried to fly through his large glass window.
He couldn't let the poor creatures lie there and freeze, so he tried to direct the birds into the barn. He opened the doors wide and turned on a light, but the birds did not come in. He figured food would entice them, so he fetched breadcrumbs, sprinkled them on the snow making a trail to the doorway of the stable. But to his dismay, the birds ignored the breadcrumbs and continued to flop around helplessly in the snow. He tried catching them. He tried shooing them into the barn by walking around them waving his arms. Instead they scattered in every direction, except into the warm, lighted barn. And then he realized that they were afraid of him. To them he was a strange and terrifying creature.
If only I could think of some way to let them know that they can trust me, that I'm not trying to hurt them but to help them. But how? If only I could be a bird, he thought to himself, I could tell them not to be afraid.
At that moment the church bells began to ring. The sound reached his ears above the sounds of the wind and he stood there listening to the bells peeling the glad tidings of Christmas, and he sank to his knees in the snow.
Dave DeLuca, a pastor, is the author of various articles and Bible studies, as well as the book How to Deal with the Ten Toughest Stress Situations.
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