WHAT DO YOU DO WITH THE STUFF LEFT BEHIND BY THE THAW?

One of the seasons in northwest Alaska is “the thaw.” Over the last week you have gotten just a glimpse of what “the thaw” looks like in Alaska after seven months of snow has piled up.

The snow, when it falls, is beautiful.  (Really!)  When the white stuff melts away, though, we see the junk that has been hidden.  It’s not pretty. Cups, plastic bottles, fast food wrappers, discarded newspapers, cigarette butts, and other material  we’ll not mention.

What do you do with the junk left behind by the thaw? Do you let it accumulate from one year to the next?  I lived in a small village where trucks were still sitting in yards where they had ground to a halt ten years before.  Junk was often left where it had fallen or stopped.

In relationships   -at home, at work, at school, at church-  there are blessings and then there is junk.  Hurt feelings.  Misunderstandings.  Conflict that never gets resolved.  Small slights that grow, over time, to wreck families and classes and neighborhoods.

More and more I see this happening on Facebook.  Not long ago I saw a minor moment at someone’s family gathering mushroom into a big deal.  A good friend last week on Facebook said she was stepping back from the social community because of meanness that was more than she could bear.

Two generations before in our extended family, two brothers, living about fifty miles apart, went for more than 25 years without talking.  When they got together late in life neither could remember how the whole thing got started.

It’s an easy thing to live by the law of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”  It’s easy to strike back at those who hurt us.  And it is easy to run away.  Leave the family.  Exit the church.  Refuse to take phone calls.  Fight or flight…both are easy.

Jesus offers another way and it isn’t easy: forgiveness.  Forgiveness is a way forward.  Forgiveness is a decision not to let your yard and heart and head get cluttered up with every rusting wreck of betrayal or disappointment.

Frederick Buechner writes:  When somebody you’ve wronged forgives you, you’re spared the dull and self-diminishing throb of a guilty conscience.  When you forgive somebody who has wronged you, you’re spared the dismal corrosion of bitterness and wounded pride.  For both parties, forgiveness means the freedom again to be at peace inside their skins and to be glad in each other’s presence.

Join us this weekend for The Mystery of Forgiveness.  Then, on January 27^th we begin a series of messages on extreme MAKEOVER: HOME EDITION where we’ll explore what genuine community might look like when we allow God to shape our life.

In Christ and for Christ,

Mark