As We Forgive Those

It's all about repentance today.  Jonah and Nineveh, with Jesus warning His contemporaries that their generation would fare the worse for having a grander prophet and treating Him with less change of life.  Not respect.  Jesus wanted action from His teaching.

That's where Jonah went wrong, of course.  Wanting respect as he preached doom.  Wanting the people he came there to save to also thank him.  Or to see them burn for spurning him at the first.  Wanting to have it easy as he was doing good and then being discontent with the shade God provided to help improve his mood.

I think the good rehearsal today was the shade covering my head on the hilltop, and I really hope I responded positively enough that a worm is not going to come in the night and devour it.

I was in a MOOD today, though, somewhat justified.  And I went tearing around for ten minutes trying to get it out in time to teach my class (14 minutes later) and tearing poor styrofoam cups to shreds.  Actually helped.

But I wonder if I faced my real test later that afternoon when the person who caused such a problem with Sound of Music came in trying to help and still being super difficult but actively engaged in helping.  Not lazy, as I had feared, but either confused or inflexible (hard to tell which).  Trying to do the right thing.  Nice about it.

Allowing people to repent or finding that they aren't as bad as you thought -- it does take something to allow them to be that in your mind as well.  It takes doing the work of letting your worldview go.  And come to think of it, when I retold the story at the weekly Wednesday dinner, I made him sound difficult and a little crazy rather than trying to help me.  I may have given a token mention to that, but nothing to turn the tide of my little tirade.

It used to be so inexplicable to me that Jonah would be angry that Nineveh repented.  That they did what he asked and he saved the people he came there to save.  That he saved a town.  And then got angry about its children not dying in fire and brimstone for their parents' sins.

When you're angry enough to walk out on Nineveh in its hour of doom in the first place, it can be incredibly hard to allow Nineveh to be anything but a steaming cesspit of sin in your mind's eye.  Imagine your guilt for burning a bridge when it turns out they could have been a nice person all along and will be someday.  If you hadn't destroyed their life.

I wasn't anywhere near this scale today, but my worldview is still adjusting slowly to the true facts.  Letting go of the anger and frustration best directed into solving the problem.

Nineveh did something remarkable and difficult to see.  Difficult to look at.  Not only because the moment of emotional repentance is invisible but because even the most visible acts of repentance and making amends are received by people who have already decided the transgressors' guilt.

Because we all forget that we will be judged by the measure we judge others.  Forgiven our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.