BEING RECONCILED TO GOD

I asked people in our congregation about their struggles with forgiveness… I had a conversation with a woman in her fifties who said to me, “I’ve never told anyone this before, but when I was in my twenties I got pregnant. I was scared and decided to have an abortion. But after the abortion, I calculated the date the child would have been born, and every year for the last thirty years during that month, I think about the child I might have had.”

It was clear that this woman still carried a burden, even thirty years later. It was not wrong for her to remember the baby she aborted, but even in that case, God longs for the woman to know His grace and forgiveness. Each of us has done things we regret and cannot change. We cringe or even cry when we think of them. And yet often we carry these burdens unnecessarily. We fail to trust that God “is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love” (Psalm 103:8), and that “as far as the east is from the west, so far shall He remove our sins from us” (Psalm 103:12). Through it all, God’s message to us remains the same: Stop carrying the burden yourself. Let Me take it. Be reconciled to Me.

This is the thing to remember: God has already agreed to that reconciliation. Paul Tillich, in one of his sermons, said that the bottom line of faith is accepting God’s acceptance of you. When you turn to God and long to be with Him, He is already reaching out, waiting for you with open arms. God has done everything necessary for your forgiveness, and He offers that forgiveness freely. All you have to do to gain this grace -- grace that came at such a terrific price -- is to accept it. 

-- Adapted from “Forgiveness: Finding Peace Through Letting Go” by Adam Hamilton

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