How many of us remember our early school days, and the laughter and the fights we had with our classmates. Every day was packed with so many different issues from name calling to accusing each other of mischief, and in some instance pushing and shoving without any real reason. I cannot remember coming home with any baggage of carrying my school or classroom issues because there were never a time that I felt aggrieved or marginalised to an extent that I had to deal with it another day. Within matter of minutes or more realistically by end of day, all brawls, fights and little mischiefs were forgiven. I don’t know about you, I really liked my school days. I longed to go back to school each day, as it brought new challenges and new things to learn. The best part was to chill out with your friends, especially with the ones I had issues with, the previous days.
So fast forward the tape, sorry wrong phrase, may be your blue ray, or high definition smart phones, what has changed? Why do we keep holding on to the baggage of the past? It is all behind us, we no longer need to repeat the same mistakes and make our presents dreadful. I know, there are things which bothered us in the past, and it took mammoth energy to get through the rough waters.
Isn’t it time to celebrate and use the same energy to be positive and praise God we are no longer in the same rut? Jesus our master who is full of grace demonstrated on many occasions, where he forgave and said ‘sin no more’ (John 8). Why do we keeping sinning, it is against the law of God. We have been forgiven, this forgiveness has been granted to us at a cost.
Let us unpack our bags of filth, pride, selfishness, bitterness, self-righteousness and fill them with our childhood characters which are covered with grace, love, forgiveness and selflessness. Stop blowing our trumpets of falsehood, instead ask God to give us His power and Holy Spirit to bring back peace and grace in our relationships, in our households, in our understandings.
Forgiveness and acceptance are the detergents of body life that allow us to live free of the past. We all need a “fresh start” when we mess up (Warren, 2020).
“But if you do not forgive others, your Father will not forgive you your sins”. (Matthew 6:15).
Stay safe and stay with Christ
Elder Ramesh Massey