Saturday, September 8, 2012

Fifty Years to Forgiveness

I had the occasion this week to read again Letters to an American Lady, the compilation of letters that C.S. Lewis wrote to Mary Willis Shelburne, an American widow living in Washington, D.C..  The correspondence began in 1950 and ended shortly before Lewis' death in the fall of 1963.  The letters themselves are remarkable in how they reveal Lewis' steadfastness for this woman who seemed in constant need of encouragement.  Lewis was steadfast to all who corresponded with him.  He committed himself to reply to every letter he received -- children and adult alike.  His collection of letters, published by Harper, stretch to well over 3000 pages with several letters to a page! 

In the last year of his life, four months before dying, Lewis wrote Ms. Shelburne with the glad report that he "at last had forgiven the cruel schoolmaster who so darkened my childhood."  This was a man who appeared in his life fifty years before and had arbitrarily and maliciously abused his students physically and emotionally.  He was later to be found insane.  Nevertheless, Lewis harbored anger and resentment.  Even after accepting Christ he couldn't bring himself to truly forgive the man.  He would pray forgiveness for the evil schoolmaster, long dead, but in his heart he knew that he couldn't let the pain go.  

But he wouldn't stop trying!  He took the clause in the Lord's Prayer seriously:  Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.  He realized that the two acts are forever interlinked.  "The forgiving and the being forgiven are really the same thing," he tells the widow Shelburne.  For fifty years he appealed to Christ for help in doing what he himself could not do.  And finally, after a half century of pleading, the Holy Spirit brought about a work of grace. 

It makes me wonder how seriously I take the call to forgive.  How many times have I given a faint wave of grace and yet harbored a lingering resentment.  God cares too much about our enemies to let us get by with the mere lip service of accepting apologies.  He knows it takes more than that for people to truly encounter the sweet mercy of Christ.  It takes our appeal to the Holy Spirit for something to be done IN us, so something can be done FOR them.  All become the better for it. 

Who remains on your "need to be truly forgiven" list?  Fifty years is a long time, but it's worth it in the end. 

1 comment:

  1. I heard recently Steve that God calls us to forgive because our debtors are children of God too. For us to fulfill his calling, we must strive to be Christ-like in showing his love to all neighbors, good and bad alike.

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