Revisiting--"repentance without regret, leading to salvation"

How quickly I forget a miracle...

Only a few days removed and already the habitual stagnation returns. God used me, in spite of all my imperfections and disqualifying past, to help a friend make an improbable (some might say impossible) change of heart towards someone who wounded him deeply. And yet, even after God said "thank you" for not really much of anything except a few obedient days of prayer and genuine Bible study, I still find it easy to slack.

As for the miracle: I call it miraculous not only for the amazing transformation, but for the method, the steps clearly taken by God to prepare a foundation that made such a transformation possible.

What made the miracle so meaningful to me was the fact that its end revealed to me in real time a small glimpse of Jesus' forgiveness. I've lived 28 years, 8 months and so many days, and I've been involved in church in some fashion for most of that. I've been a Christian for as long as I can remember and never really experienced that life-altering, "scale-removing", pulling from the depths of sin experience that makes forgiveness all the more real and sweet. But here is my friend, my good friend, suffering a blow that could have been mine. Here he was, questioning God and himself, swallowing his rage, wondering if he had wasted 8 years of commitment to someone other than himself...ready to give up everything.

But by the grace of an amazing God, he made a complete reversal by the next morning. He chose forgiveness, but only because God had laid the foundation--He made it possible for an awesome good to come of another of Satan's statistics.

He became a picture of what Christ did for me so many years ago. My friend's forgiveness for the ones he had a worldy right to hate showed me Jesus anew and perhaps, in a way previously unknown to me. How could he say "forgive them"...how could he choose such a road when he had a "right" to justice in full??

To paraphrase Nelson Mandela after being released from 30 years of wrongful imprisonment: "we need healing more than we need justice"

That's it.

That's what the bigots and militant homosexuals and stupids and uglies and murderers and chain smokers and overeaters and gum smackers and road ragers and gossipers and legalistics and politicians and terrorists and...hypocrites...and "wretch[es] like me" need. That's what Jesus came to give.

That's what makes this ridiculous life...this nonsensical cycle of pain and happiness, suffering and pleasure, birth and death...worth bothering with in the first place.

It's LOVE in its most amazing shape--forgiveness.

Thank you Lord...for your forgiveness! Please revive that spirit of thankfulness and peace in me anew each day. In Jesus name...