Forgive Us Our Trespasses ...

Right in the midst of the Lord’s prayer, something important happens.  After beginning our prayer with claims about who God is (and who that makes us), after remembering God’s holiness and asking for God’s kingdom to come and will to be done, after asking God to provide for our needs, we suddenly become keenly aware of our own sin.  Who am I, after all, to be asking the Creator of the universe for such lofty things?

And so the next line in the prayer, asks for forgiveness.  And more, too.  “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”  Not only do we ask for God to release us from the ways we have wronged him and others, we seek strength to release others from the ways they’ve sinned again them.

It is as if we realize that in order for God’s Kingdom to come, God’s Will to be done – and even for all of us to receive our daily bread – that reconciliation is needed.  Not just the kind of forgiveness that says, “Oops! I’ll try harder next time,” and then goes on doing whatever we were doing before.  But the kind of forgiveness that brings something totally new – a change in the relationship that’s more humble, respectful, where God Himself is seen in the other.

Our world needs that kind of reconciliation.  We need that kind of reconciliation.  Our neighbors near and far need that kind of reconciliation.  May God give it to us.  May God give it through us.  And may we be strengthen for these difficult, challenging, and necessary miles.

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