Turning sorrow into worship

Guest post by Isaac Johnson, who blogs at Doulos Reviews and Building a Better Me

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’ll remember Barry’s post on forgiveness and Corrie Ten Boom. It reminded me of one of the letters Mark Driscoll wrote in Death by Love. It was addressed to a young man who was a Christian. His father often beat him up while he was growing up. Many times the son would put himself in harms way so that he would take the worst of the beating to protect his sisters. He had so many scars from childhood and the pathetic father he had. Then, the father becomes a believer. Now the son is left with many questions and a myriad of emotions. Now that his father is a brother in Christ, how does he let go of the past? Is he just supposed to forget everything and act like it never happened? And how does the father live with what he’s done? It was definitely one of the most powerful chapters in the book. This theme of forgiveness has caused me to look deep inside my own heart.

On one hand, I’m happy to say I’ve never really been wronged to such an extent that I’ve felt it hard to forgive someone. The person that I’ve had the hardest time forgiving is myself. Even after I have received the forgiveness of the person I have wronged and have asked for and received forgiveness from my heavenly Father, I have difficulty forgiving myself.

And then, there is the cross.

“but if you do not forgive others…”

The most pointed words in the Bible on the subject of forgiving others come directly from the lips of Jesus.  They’re so pointed, in fact, that we’re tempted, for various reasons, to dull their razor sharp barbs.

I want to look briefly at two examples from Jesus’ teaching on the subject of forgiveness.  These are genuinely hard sayings—not in the sense that they’re hard to understand (they’re actually easy to understand), but in the sense that they’re hard to accept at face value, and hard to reconcile with other truths we hold dear.

Forgiveness, Don Henley, and me

Years ago I went through an experience so painful and so personal that I can’t elaborate on it here.  It was gut-wrenching, beyond my ability to put into words, and beyond anything else that I’ve ever experienced.  I was deeply wounded; and for a while at least, I was angry at those who had hurt me.

I found help in the most unexpected place.  It came in the form of a song.  It wasn’t a “Christian” song, but it was a Godsend.

The song was “Heart of the Matter” by former Eagles member Don Henley.  It broke me.  And it helped me get down to the heart of the matter.  It was about forgiveness.

Forgiveness and Corrie Ten Boom

At times we all find it hard–if not impossible–to forgive those who’ve hurt us most.

In the mid-70s, not long after I became a Christian, I heard about a woman who had spent time in Nazi concentration camps for hiding Jews in her home during the Holocaust.  52 and unmarried, she had lived at home with her elderly father and older sister Betsie.  All three of them had been sent to concentration camps when the Nazis discovered they had been hiding the Jewish refugees.  The woman’s name was Corrie Ten Boom.

Corrie lost her freedom, her dignity, and her beloved sister and father in the span of a few months in those concentration camps.  In God’s providence Corrie was released due to a clerical error, just one week before the other women in Ravensbruck her age were executed.

Forgiveness and Fred Winters’ widow

We are never more like Jesus than when we suffer an injustice, and yet freely forgive those who have wronged us.  The wife and family of pastor Fred Winters suffered a grave injustice when a stranger walked into their church and fatally shot Pastor Winters during the early morning worship service.  And yet Cindy Winters responded with grace and compassion.

My wife saw this news segment the morning it aired, and was deeply moved by it.  I’ll have more to say about forgiveness later; for now, there’s nothing at all that I can add to Cindy Winters’ words.

(HT:  Peter Cockrell)