Luke 17: 3 Take
heed to yourselves: If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he
repent, forgive him. 4 And if he trespass against thee seven times in
a day, and seven times in a day turn again to thee, saying, I repent; thou
shalt forgive him.
I don't know about you, but this has always been a difficult thing for me to do. I still remember the person who said that I didn't look pregnant when I was near my delivery date. For some, that might have felt like a compliment. For me, it felt like she was saying that I just looked heavy like usual (I hate using the F_ _ word). It hurt my self-esteem so much!
I remember being left off of teams, was the last one to be selected, and left out of groups. I used to feel there was something wrong with me, like I had done something wrong to have people ignore me or neglect my feelings and opinions. It wasn't until much later, I realized it was because I was heavy all that time. It probably wasn't until I had lost all the weight and started finding that people included me in things, asked my opinions, and acted like they mattered. I had to do a lot of prayerful soul searching to figure it out, but realized the weight loss made a difference in people's interactions with me. Once I realized this, I was angry with those people who now paid attention to me and treated me nicely when they ignored me before.
This Bible Passage reminds me that I need to be a Forgetful Christian, forgetting and letting go of past experiences and forgiving others regardless of what they did or didn't do, the same way that Christ forgives me. Luke 17: 3 Take heed to yourselves: If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him. 4 And if he trespass against thee seven times in a day, and seven times in a day turn again to thee, saying, I repent; thou shalt forgive him.
