Forgive, but don't forget

I admit my memory sometimes fails me, usually at the most inopportune time -- like when a familiar face appears and their name flies out of my head like bats out of a cave at sunset.

It happens in other ways, as it did just the other day. A face, familiar in one context, struck no resounding chord in my memory in another. And the one unrecognized was astonished that I had forgotten his name, his face.

"Don't you know me?" he asked.

Other times my memory is all too clear and my mental meandering takes me down paths I thought I had abandoned long ago.

You may be familiar with similar paths taken in your own life. Dark, wooded paths with tree roots emerging to trip you up, causing skinned knees, and skinned palms as you try to catch yourself as you fall.

These are the paths of remembered wounds and those who caused them.

The betrayals, the abandonments, the thievery of goods, money or innocence, whatever the wound, no matter how old the scar, the pain is as fresh as yesterday, the sting, the bloodletting -- all are resurrected with the memory.

We've all heard the saying "Forgive and forget," and for the most part, we do our best to fulfill the first part. I fear the second half of that admonition is far beyond us.

It's hard to let go of the hurt. It's hard to leave the scab alone and cease picking at the edges, looking at the wound from every angle, rehashing the how, the when, the what, even the why of it all. We show the wounds to all who will look upon them with sympathy, we soak up their words of determined condemnation of the one who has wounded us and we find validation.

Each time a is wound is resurrected, perhaps it is time to forgive again.

When Jesus spoke about forgiveness, he was very clear as to what the Lord God expects from the forgiven. They are to become forgivers.

When Peter asked how many times shall my brother sin against me and I should forgive, up to seven times? Jesus was clear. Up to seventy times seven, he said, warning all who would listen to the parable that followed in Matthew 18:21-35, that if we should fail to forgive, we, in turn, would not be forgiven.

That lesson applies here as well. As wounds are resurrected, the need to forgive, again, is also resurrected. I know of no other balm.

Jesus, wholly God and wholly man, understands fully the power of the wound. He understands rejection. He understands abandonment. He understands hunger. He understands thirst.

He also understands temptation and its power to cause us to inflict wounds on ourselves, perhaps the deepest wounds of all, because we do it ourselves, we betray ourselves, we abandon who we want to be, who we ought to be. He knows what the prophet meant when he stated, "The heart is deceitful above all things." in Jeremiah 17:9. Truth be told, our hearts have taken us to some pretty dark places. Our hearts also have led us to dangerous decisions, decisions that cause us to be the one inflicting the wounds, ones in need of forgiveness, from God and from those we wounded. These memories, too, return, and the pain remains acute.

Jesus understands how hard it is to forget. And perhaps it is God's own blessing that it is so very hard. For in forgetting, especially our own sins -- the pain they caused others and the pain they brought to us -- we may be prone to repeat them. After all, we read, over and over again, how often Israel "forgot God" and the disastrous consequences of their faulty memory.

At every remembrance, therefore, forgive again, until, if need be, the same sin has been forgiven until seventy times seven, so that we may be comforted again by the act of forgiving and rest in the understanding that God doesn't expect from us more than he himself can give, and will forgive, until seventy times seven if need be, the same sin, the same sinner. And at every remembrance, as you forgive again, remember the sins you once carried, that have been lifted and carried far away.

"As far as the east is from the west, so far he has removed our transgressions from us." Psalm 103:12 (NIV)