I was watching Dateline (I LOVE Dateline), a story about a pastor and his wife who was murdered and his children who should have died, but were saved from their life-threatening bullet wounds.
It's about forgiveness that wasn't expected and about pain and the way we deal with our wounds. And it's being made into a movie named Heaven's Rain.
And I think it made me realize that I have a small wound that I keep thinking has healed, but it has not. Of course, it is nowhere near the pain that the Douglass family felt, but it has to do with God's church.
Andrea on Arise2Write asked if we had ever been hurt by the church. I've covered it before on here as well. I love my church and I love the way it treats all people, but I know that when I go to churches that are not mine or like mine, I recoil. I recoil at the things they say and I turn from them and they way they talk about God and life and everything under the sun.
Then the guilt! The guilt of turning from God! But it's not that. And I think I'm starting to understand it. And I think that it's time that I let go of the anger...and I felt that I had forgiven, but I don't know if that's the case. I think that I forgave my grandmother and my friend, but I have not forgiven their churches. And I need to.
The quality of mercy is not strain'd,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
- Portia, The Merchant Of Venice Act 4, scene 1, 180–187
Well written.
ReplyDeleteI saw that Dateline episode too. And I LOVE Dateline too! Wasn't that so sad? What the heck is wrong with our legal system, that they had to go back to court over and over again.
ReplyDeleteAnd like you...I have to forgive a church. A pastor, no less. Ouch! What has helped me is to remember that people, even pastors, are flawed humans. Every church has their own way of doing things, but we all have the same God. I just read in the NT the other day where Paul said "Is Christ divided?" He was talking about all the separation in the churches. That really got to me.
Have a great week, Danae! Everytime I see a cupcake I think of you...
As Jason Gray says in his song More Like Falling in Love "All religion ever made of me was a sinner with a stone tied to my feet. It never set me free."
ReplyDeleteMay you untie the stone that holds you down so that you can truly praise God with a joyful heart. :)