the rantless rant

It's easy to be angry. It' s easy to be angry and loud and belligerent and hop up and down and be filled with emotion...
You know what's hard? Being peaceful.Dang, I know that must sound like a pretty big wad of pap to everyone, but honestly. The easy road is being angry. The cowards way out is stamp and pout. The heros forgive. The strong surrender...

It's such a simple to thing to be angry. The world at large doesn't insist I give people second and third and fourth chances. It asks only that I buy, consume, watch, worship... There is no "Haters Anonymous," no support group that I can attended to help amend and mend my ways. We depend only on one another as understanding Christian brothers and sisters to say, "yeah that sucks. Forgiveness is hard. How can I help?"

Yet, what do we do when we don't get that? So often our turn to the church turns into a finger pointing fest, or we smacked down with the scriptures...

Brother Christ can usually find us in the end of our aggression. When our rage is spent and our hearts are still empty and we turn and ask, "Is that all there is?" What does vindication get us? What if our rage were fulfilled? The one we hate crashes and burns their life in ruin, their spirit in agony--what is there for us there? We watch at first with glee... and then?

Blessed are the merciful for they will receive mercy... Ole JC hits us with a list of 9 paradoxs once of which is this little gem. How can we receive mercy if we have no idea what it is, or what it means to receive it. It's like giving a vegan grill prime rib. They just won't know what to do with it. In theory it's painfully obvious and simple, in practice it is the hardest of God's instructions.

Even the disciples, man and women who followed Jesus for three years, struggled with the practice... "how many times? Seven? Seven times Seven?" The reply comes that there is no set number or order the we have in forgiveness. We cannot say to each other you have 4 more, 3 more, 2 more chances and then you are stricken from my record. Christ knew the price that was about to be paid, he knew that in the face of that deficit our sins to one another could never again be counted in the black.

So what i am i doin? The conscious daily desicion i guess. I force my heart to forgive. I instruct my mind and mouth to pray good things for my enemies. I purposefully count them as friends in my heart. I still burn with the hurt and rejection, but i allow that to evaporate under the knowing of the greater debt that was paid. . .