Friday, August 8, 2008

Forgiveness...Why is it so hard?

The other day, I was watching television with my sister and this documentary came on TLC. It was about this little boy, 7 years old who lived in Uganda, who had a condition in which his head was cone shaped and his eyes were almost bulging out of his head (I didn't see enough of it to get the name of the condition).

His whole town pretty much disowned him. They rideculed him, made fun of him. He had to leave his school because the kids would torment him so much and even the TEACHERS would ignore him and exclude him. Well, long story short, an American doctor offered to perform plastic surgery on him to fix his features. When he came home, the whole village had a huge celebration for him. Everyone wanted to be around him. He was the most popular kid in his school. He was basically a celebrity in his village. So, not only did were they horrible to him when he was disfigured, but when he came home, they only accepted him because he looked like they did.
And you know what he said? "I know that I have to forgive the people in my village. And I have."

7 YEARS OLD, and he understands forgiveness more than we do.

We are the "Christians". Aren't we supposed to know more about forgiveness than a young boy?

Why is it that a little boy can forgive his entire village, the people that made fun of him relentlessly and forced him to leave his school and his country until he changed his APPEARANCE, but we can't forgive our neighbor for the smallest thing?
We hold grudges against people for the dumbest things!

We do the stupidest, meanest, most horrible things, things known as sin, and Jesus forgives us for ALL of it.
If we call ourselves Christians, followers of Christ, shouldn't we be showing the same love and mercy, or at least try as hard as we can to?
Yeah, it's inconveinent. Yeah, it's hard. But if a little boy can do it, who perhaps has never heard the gospel, why can't we?
Why is it so hard?

Challenge yourself. Become AWARE. If it is inconveinent...then you should probably do it.

Peace
Liz

5 comments:

Ryan Weiss said...

For me, this just shows how true it is that only as a child may you enter the Kingdom. What do they see that we dont? What do they feel that we cant?

sfc said...

Good stuff Liz....I love you! Mom

Anonymous said...

Great, GREAT word. Seriously.. this is awesome. I pray that I could have the eyes of a child.

Anonymous said...

UPDATE girl!

Liz said...

Sorry!!! I am really trying to write a new one, but first off it was a CRAZYYY week, and second off I am just having a writers block.
I know what I would write about for the most part, but the words aren't coming to me and my heart wouldn't be totally into it as of right now.
But I am really trying! Sorry! :D