Come Follow Me: Matthew 18 and Luke 10 - Forgiveness 70 times 7

 So as a person who is as broken as any of us, I have to smile at recent events. One of my weaknesses is that I'm not very good at forgiving. I have stuff with my siblings that go back 20+ years, and I have made a number of steps, but inside me, I really have trouble forgiving them.

Then yesterday. I was invited to play pickleball. This is a game I can enjoy because it's very personal. Unlike tennis where you're too far away to talk, or racquetball where you can't hear because you're in a concrete cave, pickleball is more personal. You're only a few feet from anyone playing, and you can easily hear anybody say anything. 

So imagine my thoughts as I walk in to the court and see people that are not exactly on my happy list. In order, here's a description:

• Person one was a political opponent, if only for the HOA. I felt that I was tired of the nazi style command and control nature of the HOA leadership, so after it got bad enough I decided to stand up and resist the craziness. First this man angrily stood up and said "I want to know who is going to support the CC&R's". Well, that wasn't me. I intended to use my own head. CC&R's are what they are, but I wasn't about to warm the chair & quote CC&R's - I was going to make a culture change. A flimsy excuse was used to cancel my candidacy, and I believe this person was the one who spearheaded that. This person and I haven't talked since that time, and we tend to avoid each other in church. He was one of the pickleball players. 
• Person two is a narcissist with all that comes with that. She has to win. She'll talk about how famous she is. I could go on but that would be perhaps needlessly unkind. This is the kind of person I try to avoid because I prefer to surround myself with people who lift me. She is not that kind of person. She was another of the pickleball players. 
• The third is a well meaning dude, but playing sports with him can be frustrating. There is no rule that doesn't predictably bend his way. There is no line call that doesn't result favorably for him. For me, that feels like a mixture of a need to control and a bit of self centeredness. He's the other person on the court. 

And now I'm on the court with all of them. I can't even rotate the teams so that I'm partnered with the
most favorable one, because they're all unfavorable. 

So now I run into this week's Come Follow Me lesson and we get forgiveness as one of the main themes. I think that's super funny because it's my reminder from somewhere upstairs that I have a forgiveness problem. Forgive 70 times 7? Shoot, it's hard for me to forgive once or twice sometimes. 

So how do I forgive somebody who I believe cancelled my candidacy in the shadiest of methods? I'd like to say that maybe I recognize that everybody does stupid stuff - I certainly do. That's not enough for me though - I wish I could write it off that easily. Maybe he had a valid reason in his head for doing what he did. Maybe he was used to using the rules and the power he had to his favor. Maybe it was just a routine power play for him - a game politicians play. Unremarkable for him, life changing for me. 

Years ago, I listened for a while as another person I know well complained about this church leader and that. I asked her a question I shouldn't have: "Is it OK with you that other people are imperfect?" She blew up and was angry about that for a very long time. The funny thing is that I can give her grief about not being OK with imperfection, but I can't do it myself. I struggle just to play pickleball with people whose imperfections I see. 

Maybe it's not about finding a justification in my mind for why I should forgive (he was just being political, etc), and just forgiving. Christ can forgive him - or not. That's for Him to decide. Maybe it's as simple as me just playing pickleball - or moving ahead with life as the case may be. 

Hard. It's very hard.