I don’t know how it is in your house, but in ours there is one that tries a little harder than the other to patch up offenses. A blogging friend of mine just posted a story about one such attempt that involved a dozen roses presented on bended knee. It’s the perfect example of the extent to which the offender will often go – bending over backwards – to make things right with the offended.
My wife and I just got back from an anniversary trip. She has wanted, for quite some time, to browse through a certain store. Knowing the store was in the city we were going to be in, we decided to take part of a day to walk through and see what all they had. The store is huge; in fact it was a bit overwhelming.
Now you might think you know where this is going – the husband gets aggravated for being drug through a store that big while on vacation and then has to patch things up with his wife for ruining something she had looked forward to for so long. Guess again.
For once, knowing how much she had looked forward to it, I was good with it all. I put mental energy into making sure I was good with it all. But then the unexpected happened; because of the size, my wife got a little too tired before we finished making it all the way through. This time, I was the offended and she the offender.
Pretty soon after we got in the car, she apologized for becoming irritable. That should have been enough . . . but I wanted a dozen roses presented on bended knee. I kept waiting for more apology – more acknowledgement that I had done well to make her day enjoyable – more apology for not enjoying it as much as she thought she would. The longer it went, the quieter things got.
I thought I was doing good to bring it up later that evening. I didn’t want the ‘sun to go down on our wrath’. Add to the mix that the next day was actually our anniversary; I wanted us to get back on track.
I’ve decided to leave out the details of what happened next. I’ll let you fill in with what you think happened. But the next morning I got up and decided to read 1 Corinthians 13 to see what I might learn about love. I ended up reading 4-8a over and over and over. There was a phrase that kept standing out; ‘love keeps no record of wrong’.
Leave it to God to show you something you’ve never thought of. I had the frame of mind that thought it was the obligation of the offender to patch things up with the offended; and there is definitely a place for that in the patching process. But . . . ‘keeping no record of wrong’ – that changes things.
What if I had kept no record of my wife’s wrong? What if I had overlooked it? What if, instead of me wanting to see her bend over backwards to patch things, I bent over backwards to make sure there was nothing to patch? From a history of normally being the offender, I know there is a part in the effort to patch that is trying to relieve ourselves of guilt. What if, instead of wanting to see the offender bend over backwards to relieve themselves of guilt, we bend over backwards to relieve them of it?
It turns out, looking back, that is exactly what I should have done. She got tired and I took it personally. Had I loved like I should have, there would’ve been no wrong to keep record of.
And totally separate from this personal story, is the parallel of us with God. Don’t we, in an attempt to relieve ourselves of guilt, bend over backwards to patch things with Him. Don’t we do and do and do in an attempt to patch our wrong. Would He tell us to do something that He is not willing Himself to do? I have a new appreciation for the thought now, that we are the record keepers, not Him.
Read Full Post »
Hunger and Thirst 