Good morning, friends!  The new year is in full swing now and I hope you are fully invested in it.  No time to start over, so let’s get to it!

“He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love.”

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King

My daughter is a senior in high school and facing the realities of life in college next year.  Conversations have begun about that life.  Just this weekend she mused on the challenges of dormitory life and living with a roommate.  Camps and colleges provide young people with intense opportunities to learn first hand the skills of community.  The shock of difference is often jarring.  We learn pretty quickly in community that WE are different!  Successful actors in community tend to share certain abilities, ripe among them is forgiveness.

In my life I’ve only encountered a few people who were adamantly opposed to love.  As you can imagine such persons have great challenges of anger, bitterness, pain, etc. that have stunted their spirits.  The supermajority of us long to daily be bathed in love.  We want to drink love, swim in love, stumble over love, know nothing but love.  And yet we don’t.  For some odd reasons cheat ourselves out of love too often, frequently because of forgiveness issues.

I know there are people in my life who have not nor likely ever will forgive me for any slight against them I did or they perceive.  Some I deserve, some I don’t.  Same for you.  But we know we are not responsible for the acts of other persons.  What is more critical and confounding is the love we lose because WE do not forgive.  Is love so cheap, so abundant, so common that we can fritter it away.  Not in my life and I’ll bet not in yours either.  The lessons of kindergarten, camp and college rule: forgiveness is key to community.  And love.

·   Are you using forgiveness as a weapon or a blessing?

·   Are you losing community because of differences or growing it with forgiveness?

·   Who could you bless with forgiveness today?

My work has taught me a lot about life, about the ends of the arcs we choose early in life.  Develop the strength of forgiveness today, start a journey on that life arc, and swim in the love that abounds.  You can do it!  And have a wonderful week.

Matthew 5:43-48