Friends

I don’t know about you, but over and over at the moment, I am presented with evidence of the lasting impact of the previous few years on our mental health. It is no secret that our young people are struggling, or that the single biggest killer of people between the ages of 12 and 35 in this country is suicide. Nor is it a secret that things have been done and decisions made by those in power that we have a right to be angry about.

Martin Luther King says, “We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love.” Jesus told Peter, when asked how many times he should forgive: seventy times seven. These powerful statements are important, although they don’t require of us that we put ourselves in the position where the person can do the same thing again.

It has been said that “To err is human, to forgive, divine” and perhaps that is the ultimate answer. We struggle to forgive and keep on forgiving, God does not. We are told in Lamentations 23:22-24 that “Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, ‘The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.’”

As we continue to reap the bitter fruits of Brexit and Covid, it is right that where we have been lied to, those lies are exposed. It is right that truth is told and that anger is allowed to be expressed. Then I would suggest, we need to dig deep and forgive: our leaders for not having the plans, or perhaps the integrity, we had hoped for; ourselves for not being able to somehow do it better (as if somehow we could have!); and all the various scapegoats that will be presented to us, fairly or unfairly, as the days go by. These three things: truth, anger and forgiveness may need to be told, believed, experienced, expressed, offered and received before we can move on to address the terrible impact that the last three years, and possibly the last seven, have had upon our psyche as individuals, as communities and as a nation. We praise God that we have a pattern to follow that shows us how to do truth, anger and forgiveness and that God’s love for us is new every morning, whether we deserve it or not.

God bless

Vicci