70 x 7

How difficult it is to really forgive 70x7!

The last six months of LIFE UNDER GOD'S SUPERVISION has been extremely challenging. In this time i have had to battle through a minefield of emotional and verbal abuse from God's own people. Today i was faced with one of those difficult choices in ministry: do i shrug my shoulders and say well, the wheel turns... and allow for my 'abusers' to go through a similar form of 'abuse' or do i step up and protect them from the harshness and pettiness of other church people?

The church - there where we say we are under God's supervision where love and forgiveness supposedly are the driving force behind all we do and say is often the one place where people get hurt and feel rejection more that anywhere else on earth. I have entered into the ministry knowing that part of my call is to go to places where people have been hurt by and through the church. I never expected that i would become one of the casualties of this epidemic, but ...

In less than an hour i will be chairing a meeting and here, next to me on my desk is a letter that speaks in my favor, but breaks down others - in whom the image of God is fragile at the moment (fragile but always there). The challenge tonight will be to be God's love-bug to deal with all involved in truth and in love. Tonight there will be no place for my still very bruised ego or pride, only for love and truth and a forgiveness.

my mind is made up, i will deal with this in a gentle and loving way. I will treat them in the way that i wish the treated me some time ago, but i am humbled by this task before me and i am worried. i am worried that my own pain will overrule my mind.