Forgiveness Is Not For The Deserving

I did not really receive much feedback on where to bury Daddy. A few of you responded quickly, some did not respond at all and I am sure it is because you are torn and unable to decide, but
more of you said it “did not matter.” It doesn’t matter? Wow that really puts the heavy responsibility of choosing back on me now doesn’t it. Well that is okay, I am starting to get used to that, but what does that even mean anyway?
It troubles me to think if something we choose to do does not matter, then why on earth should we do anything at all? Shouldn’t every decision we make in life be made because it does matter? When we say that something doesn’t matter are we not living in denial and are detaching ourselves to protect our intimate feelings and emotions? That’s all well and good I guess… but over the years in my life I have found that if people are careful to protect their feelings by the act of detachment, then at sometime in someway or another they have been hurt by someone, and they are still hurting. It is hard to comprehend that the only road to healing and being free from these pangs is by forgiveness. So how does one truly forgive?
Believing that our offender does not deserve forgiveness we often seek for the opportunity to forgive them by looking to them to make it right so that we may give them “deserving” forgiveness, but I will tell you that your offender will NEVER be able to make it right. He or She can not undo what they did to you and in all their efforts to try it only makes room for bitterness to take root. This is especially true if WE are the offenders, and none of us are immune to this, we just happen to believe that our own offensives are not as bad as others. Forgiveness is not for people who deserve it. If they deserve anything, it is punishment. Forgiveness means that you extend grace, “Undeserved Favor,” just like God extends undeserved favor to you. We are forgiven because of His love for us. We never deserve it, He just graciously gives it.

While forgiving our offenders and (ourselves) is a vital part to healing it is only the beginning. We must see ourselves as God sees us. All we tend to see is the ugliness of our past sins and the sins of our offenders. Sadly, even here many people work and work to try and feel justified for receiving His forgiveness so freely. So what is it that God sees when He looks upon us that make Him give us forgiveness so freely?

About three years before Daddy died he was admitted to the hospital to have open heart surgery, (quadruple bypass). We were still living in Missouri at the time and my sister Annette and I made the long drive to Northern Missouri to be with him and his wife Sondra to visit with him, and encourage him before he went under the knife. It was scheduled to be a four hour surgery, so after every 30 minutes or so they would send someone in to give us a report on how the surgery was going. After about the second hour the reports stopped coming and no one out front was able to give us any information. It was unnerving being kept in the dark not knowing what all was happening, so it was a sigh of relief when after three hours the surgeon finally came in to tell us that the surgery went better than expected and that Daddy was being rolled into the recovery room at that very moment. Seeing how anxious we were, he reassuringly told us that although Daddy was still unconscious from the medication we would be allowed to see him for a quick moment. When we went in, there he laid very still. Upon his chest they had placed a very large white gauze bandage over his fresh wound. I was seemingly drawn to this bandage and I just could not take my eyes off of it. To this day I am not sure what possessed me to do such a thing, but I asked the nurse who was monitoring him if I could see what the doctors had done to his chest. I could tell by the look on my sister’s face that she was thinking “What… are you crazy?” but the nurse said yes and without hesitation walked over to take off the bandage to show us all. I stepped up closer to him so that I could have a better look, when all of a sudden my father made a wild jerking movement and pulled himself away from the nurse. The nurse was just startled a bit but I was completely mortified. As the nurse regained her composure a bit she proceeded again to show us the wound. But before she got a chance I said, as I was slowly backing away, “No, it is okay I don’t want to bother him.” She commented on how it was no problem he was not in any pain or anything he was unconscious but sometimes the body reacts in jerking motions as it is coming down off the anesthetics. Righhhhhhhht…Okay sure this may be true, but a strange eeriness came over me and for some reason it just felt wrong, so I declined and told the nurse to just let him be. I never once gave it another thought until recently.

For several days I had been heavy laden about Daddy and was still trying to narrow down the choices of what to do with his remains. One night while I was sleeping I had a vivid dream. I was walking in a beautiful meadow feeling the loving warmth of the sun upon my face and the peacefulness of life in my heart, when strangely from out of nowhere there appeared in front of me a familiar door. I was hesitant at first but then made the decision to go on ahead and walk through it. What ever peace I did have it left me at the moment that I walked through that door. I was lifted and whirled through time to find myself once again standing before my father in the recovery room waiting for the nurse to remove the bandage, only this time my father was awake and he looked straight at me and in a pleading tone said to me “Don’t uncover my ugliness.” My heart began to ache, I knew this dream was of great significance but I did not fully understand the meaning of it. I ask the Lord to reveal it to me, and over time He did. Do you remember in the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark, where the people lifted the lid on the Ark of the Covenant and strange –looking creatures floated out and destroyed the people around it? Well all except for Indiana Jones and Marion because they kept their eyes closed and didn’t look at it. Well this of course is biblically inaccurate, but it may surprise you to learn that the Bible does record a story about a village called Beth-she-mesh who did just that. In this village the people lifted the mercy seat of the ark, and looked inside. “And he smote the men of Beth-she-mesh, because they had looked into the ark of the Lord, fifty thousand and three-score and ten men:” (I Samuel 6:13-20). What was in the ark? was there strange creatures that at first were beautiful and became ugly? No. Well wait maybe in theory… But one thing was clear God did not want people to look upon it.

What was really inside the ark were three things: the golden pot of manna, Aaron’s rod, and two tablets of stone on which God had written the Ten Commandments. (Hebrews 9:5) The golden pot of manna represented man’s rebellion against God’s provision. The Bible calls manna “angels’ food and when the children of Israel ate it while they were in the wilderness, none of them were sick for forty years. Yet, they called it “worthless bread.” The rod of Aaron represents man’s rebellion against God’s appointed leadership. The people of Israel were complaining against God’s appointment of Aaron as the high priest, so the rod was placed overnight in the tabernacle and shot it forth branches that bore fruit and flowers. God had caused Aarons’ rod to bud supernaturally to show the people that it was He who had indeed appointed Aaron. The two stones tablets of God’s commandments represented man’s rejection of His standard of holiness and our inability to keep his laws perfectly. These items could depict several different aspects of meaning, but can you also see that every item in the ark speaks of our sins and rebellion against God? But what did God do with our sins and rebellion? He put them all into the Ark of the Covenant and covered them with the mercy seat where the blood of the animal sacrifices was placed. By doing this, He was saying that He did not want to look upon man’s sins and rebellion. That is why he placed them in the ark and covered them with the mercy seat. Once a year, the high priest would enter the holy of holies where the ark was kept and sprinkle the blood of the animal that was sacrificed on to the mercy seat. As long as the blood was there on the mercy seat, God only saw the blood and accepted the people. Today Jesus is our high priest and He Himself has sprinkled His own blood on the true mercy seat in heaven –the throne of grace. The Ark of the Covenant is a shadow of our Lord Jesus Christ, His person, and His work. Because of His blood, all our sins have been cleansed. That is why it was dangerous for anyone back in those days to lift the mercy seat to uncover the sins and rebellion that God had covered. The mercy seat was not to be lifted at any time, and the consequences for doing so were severe, as seen at Beth-she-mesh. So what does God see when he looks upon us? “He sees His Sons blood that was applied.”

The large white gauze upon my father was typified as healing forgiveness. Once this gauze was place upon him you could no longer see the wound of his surgery or whatever it was that was being covered. All that one could see when they looked upon him was the brightness of the pure white gauze. We all think we may know very well what was under that gauze without actually looking at it, but Daddy doesn’t want us under there feeling and reliving the pangs of everything that he might have done wrong. He can not change what happened. He feels them as well as we do because yes, sadly too Daddy was never able to make it right. So he was asking me to stop looking under the covering and only see him through the eyes of Christ and the forgiveness that was given to him, for he knows it is only in this way that we can truly be healed.
It is the same for every one, once you extend the cover of undeserving forgiveness upon someone, leave it alone and go in peace. The healing begins when each time you look upon them you only see the blood of Christ that was applied. Tell yourself, “I did not deserve God’s forgiveness, but He forgave me through Christ so I forgive this person also.” It is only when we lift the covering that we see and feel the pangs of our offenders past sins against us. And just as God did not want the people to lift the mercy seat of the ark, he does not want us to looking under the covering of our forgiveness. This will surely harm you. God wants to heal you but you must let go, and forget their debts. Holding on causes bitterness and it will eventually overtake you, no one suffers but you. You will lose your peace, your health and your joy in life.

I have made the decision on where to bury Daddy. It will be in Phoenix next to Momma. Glendale Memorial Cemetery has given us the heartfelt permission to do so. They will take care of the burying of the urn, the making of the tombstone and its inscriptions of our choice, the placing of the tombstone, and a small ceremony if we so desire for around $1100. If you were unable to help the first time and would like to do so now it would be most welcomed, but I am not going to ask any one again to send money to help pay for this. This proved to be too great of a burden, and I don’t think I am much cut out for being a fund raiser. So I will take care of this.
Some may feel that placing Daddy next to Momma may be undeserving, as Momma was a perfect precious saint of a mother. I do agree, Momma was a precious saint, but perfect…? So yes this may be “undeserving favor” that we are placing upon Daddy, but isn’t this a good place to start, so that we may all partake in receiving Gods amazing healing. "For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified." (I Corinthians 2:2)