It has always been one of my great joys as a parent to see that my children get along with each other. It has been a delight throughout the years to hear them laugh together, when they were children and now that they are adults. I know it is a grief to parents when they see their children being unkind and cold, dismissive or even abusive to one of the other children.
I have no doubt that the heavenly Father feels this way also. He said in Psalm 133:1, "Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in unity." He also said in Ephesians 4:31, 32, "Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you."
When Saul was arrested on the road to Damascus, we read this interesting narrative: "As he journeyed, he came near Damascus and suddenly a light shone around him from heaven. Then he fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, 'Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?' And he said, 'Who are You, Lord?' Then the Lord said, 'I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting...'" Jesus took Saul's treatment of His children very personally.
In Matthew 25, Jesus taught that when you feed the hungry, or give drink to the thirsty, or clothe the naked or visit those who are sick or in prison, you are doing it to Him (v. 40) and when you don't do these things, "...inasmuch as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me" (v.45).
Long ago, a brother-in-law grievously wronged us financially. My husband found it very hard to forgive him and there was a long-time rift, but eventually Eric learned to start praying blessing down on that brother. Not long before my father-in-law died, he had the joy of seeing these two brothers reunited.
Matthew 18 includes a parable about a servant whose master forgave him a huge debt (10,000 talents which in my Bible footnotes is $3,840,000,000), but who then refused to forgive a fellow servant a much, much smaller debt (100 denarii or $3,200). How often are we like that servant, forgetting that our own sin nailed Jesus to a cross, and refusing to forgive our brothers and sisters for a grievance that is minuscule in comparison? How we hold ourselves high in our "righteous indignation" which is usually not righteous at all! How we work at punishing them for all the real or imagined wrongs that we hold against them!
My Proverbs devotional has focused on forgiveness for the past 2 days, based on Proverbs 24:29: "Do not say, 'I'll do to them as they have done to me. I'll pay them back for what they did." Did you see that? The devotional says, "Proverbs says to deliberately refuse the thought - do not say it..." It goes on, "Forgiveness is a commitment not to (pay them back)...first by refusing to hurt the person directly...Second, by refusing to cut the person down to others (even by) innuendo or hint or gossip or direct slander...Finally, don't continually replay the memories of the wrong in your imagination in order to keep the sense of loss and hurt fresh..."
Let's keep in mind that your heavenly Father cares about how you treat His other children. He takes it personally. As you do to the least of them, you do to Him.
Give your heavenly Father pleasure by "dwelling in unity", by forgiving "as God in Christ forgave you."
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