If forgiveness is so real, why don’t we feel forgiven? We are, by nature, stubborn and often hang on to the familiar, even when it hurts. We insist on dragging behind us all the awful decaying luggage of our sinfulness. It is, after all, stuff we have gotten used to. It slows us down and annoys others. It keeps us from doing things that we should be doing. But that stinky pile is familiar. But then on Sunday, our pastor stands before us and, with a grin as wide as the open door of Jesus’ tomb, announces the entire forgiveness of all of our sins. “Amen!” we say.
This message is adapted from “Forgiveness, the Gift that Keeps on Giving” written by Sue Gamelin in the March 1998 issue of Lutheran Woman Today (now Gather) magazine. Today we remember Jerome, translator and teacher, who died in 420.