Concrete Walls or Flexible Cables

Colossians 3:13

 “Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievance you may have against one another.
Forgive as the Lord forgave you.” 

Isn’t it easy to get fed up with God’s people? The problem, quite frankly, is that the church of Jesus Christ is made up exclusively of redeemed sinners. And these wretched sinners – I’m one of them – have an awful habit of showing their true colors. If we’re going to come down like a ton of bricks on everybody who shows his true colors, then there’s going to be an awful pile of bricks around the place. It’s amazing how far a little forbearance will go.

I’m not saying we turn a blind eye to things. I’m not saying we should shrug our shoulders or let anything go. Christ grace isn’t license. It’s an attitude that begins to bind together the most disparate groups of people – different in race, social position, and education.

How on earth are you going to get people this dissimilar into one new community?  You won’t…  UNLESS there is Christian grace, Christian attittude, and Christian action.

Anybody who’s been around the church for a while can talk about forgiveness. We hear much about it. It’s easy to shrug it aside. I recently read about a new wrinkle on the idea that renewed my appreciation for what it involves. It came from a TV program about stock car drivers. I know, you are saying “That will be real helpful on forgiveness, I’m sure.” Well, it was. As a group sat in class learning how to be stock car drivers the lecturer said that the first thing to remember about stock car racing was this: CONCRETE WALLS ARE VERY UNFORGIVING.

Unforgiving people remind you of concrete walls. You’ve got a bit of momentum in your life, but you’ve gone off track a little, you’re headed for trouble – but fortunately, some body has put a concrete wall in your way.  Kaboom! And that solves everything. No it doesn’t . It just makes things ten times worse.

One day, I would like to go up in a fighter plane and land on the deck of an aircraft carrier in a rough sea. Just imagine, coming in on one of those fighters. You see the aircraft carrier down below, it’s flight deck the size of a postage stamp. You say, “I sure hope they know what they’re doing.” You swoop down at 200 MPH, and as you hit the flight deck, you discover, unfortunately that someone’s built a concrete wall across your path. Kaboom! As you splatter yourself  on the windshield, you moan, “Well,  at least I’m not in the ocean.” No, they don’t build concrete walls across flight decks. They string a cable across, designed to catch a hook on the underside of the plane. The cable has all kinds of give in it. It takes the steam out of the plane’s speed and brings it to a halt.

The difference between  forgiving and unforgiving  is the difference between  concrete walls and flexible cable. Forgiving is necessary in the fellowship of believers all the time, because there is always somebody upset with somebody. There’s always some evangelical nose out of joint some-where. And the last thing that bent evangelical noses need is to be smashed into concrete walls.

Is there someone in your life who needs your forgiveness?

“Father, thank You for Your forgiveness – for Your example and enablement. Jesus, help us to be like YOU! Amen.”