Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.
Colossians 3:13 (NIV)
Forgiving What Was Never Named
A woman on second shift can feel it coming a half-second before it does. Twice a month the man at the next bench says the same thing about how fast she is, or about the way she talks to the new hires, and it has worn a groove. He doesn’t know he has ever said it once.
A church is that arrangement in a smaller room. The people Paul writes to will be in the same building next Sunday whether anything gets settled or not, and he tells them to clothe themselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Then he gets practical about what that costs. Bear with each other, and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone.
Bear with each other and forgive one another. People who see each other every week need the first one often. Most of what needs forgiving in a place like that is small and never named.
It is hard for the same reason. An apology gives you something to accept, a moment when the thing is finished and both of you know it. Without one you do the whole business alone, and no day arrives when somebody tells you that you’re done. You can find yourself six years later still running the same sentence back, still deciding.
Forgive as the Lord forgave you. The standard comes from what was done for you, not from what the other person does.
Letting go of what you have against him is one thing. The two of you end up somewhere afterward, and this verse doesn’t say where. Some friendships go back to what they were, and others stay careful and thin for years. A few should stay closed, and forgiving does not open them. You can put the thing down with all of it still clear in your mind, right down to the tone of voice.
A woman down the line saw her face the last time he said it, and one person in that building knows what it costs her twice a month. Bear with each other.
A Prayer to Remember
God, you forgave me before I understood what I had done, and you didn’t wait for me to say it properly, or at all. Thank you for that. Thank you for not holding it against me while I was in the middle of doing it, and for the years since, which I’ve done nothing to earn.
In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
