Author: Tim

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Reaching A New Audience

I’ve got some exciting news about DareGreatlyNow.com! A ministry partner has volunteered his services to make audio recordings of past blog entries, and the intent will be to make them available on the site for listening on the go!

I say “ministry partner,” but the truth is…he’s an ordinary guy who followed through on the Holy Spirit’s prompting to make use of his talents, time, and resources. He doesn’t represent a professional organization. He’s an example of what God can do with a willing heart. Thanks to his efforts, blog entries will start becoming available through a different medium, hopefully reaching a wider (or different) audience, spurring them on with the goal of encouraging others to step into the roles God made for them.

In all honesty, it’s probably going to be a long time before even a tenth of the blog’s past posts are available to listen to. Neither of us does this full time. We’re just guys who love God and said yes to different versions of a task He laid before us, and we do this on the side. The beauty of it, though, is that we’ve begun working a project that once didn’t exist, and years after it first started, there are hundreds of God-honoring posts that have collectively been read thousands of times across the globe.

Here’s where I’d love your input. In light of a limited capacity to produce audio files of past entries, I’d love to hear from you to help shape the prioritization going forward. Which past posts stand out in your mind as something that spurred you on, or as something you think others need to hear? Leave a comment or let me know at tim@daregreatlynow.com.

Big things that honor God and build His kingdom don’t usually start out big. They start with a single person being open to God’s leading. Later, other people bring reinforcements and additional depth to the project. What are you being led to do? What’s holding you back? Who will you be a ministry partner to?

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It’s Still Under Development

I like stories with twist endings you don’t see coming. The director M. Night Shyamalan is famous for putting together some movies with great twists.

One of those movies, Unbreakable, has a lot of parallels to the Christian walk. Everyone who’s received the Holy Spirit has also received custom-designed talents and abilities from Him for the purpose of serving Him and His kingdom.

I’m not going to give away the movie ending, but it’s about an ordinary guy who finds out he’s got some special powers which enable him to be much more than an ordinary guy. Amazed but confused about how to use his gift and what to do next with it, he asks a mentor of his, “What am I supposed to do?” Knowing the nature of the gift involves interactions with people, the mentor gives it to him straight: “Go to where people are. You won’t have to look very long.”

Sure enough, he followed the advice and went to a public place, where his interactions further brought out his special abilities. That practice helped him improve his ability to harness his talents and use them productively.

If you want to serve the Lord by using your God-given abilities, you might have trouble getting started. It can be frustrating to know you’ve got something special but not know what to do with it. The most important thing? Start using those abilities. God’s not going to be mad at you for not getting it perfect the first time. Even if you’ve only got a faint notion of how they can be employed, give it a go…each experience will help you get a better sense of how to put them to good use. The practice and familiarity gains you proficiency and confidence, and that’s when things really start moving.

“Do you know what the scariest thing is? To not know your place in this world, to not know why you’re here.”

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What do Freezing Temperatures and God’s Love Have in Common?

I’m guessing most of the people reading this at the end of January have recently been dealing with some very cold weather, along with some snow/ice. This past weekend there was an enormous storm that dropped snow, ice, or rain in something ridiculous like 40 states.

I’ll be honest with you, I was disappointed as the forecasted amount of snow kept dropping. At one point we were supposed to get 21 inches of it. As the models kept updating though, eventually we were projected to get less than half that.

Well, when you live in an area that’s not accustomed to more than a few inches of snow, and then you see warnings about nearly two feet of it, things start to get a little crazy. The snow wouldn’t be so bad, but then forecasts started talking about some ice mixing in. Cue the panic. Power outages mixed with some of the coldest temperatures in several years spells trouble.

I started making preparations here at home. I have electric heat, so my worst-case scenario was to lose power during the season’s coldest temperatures. I have a few batteries I use for power tools, and I charged them all up so I could use them to power lights or recharge phones. I have some firewood we could use in the fireplace, but not nearly enough to keep the whole house warm for any significant length of time. If we lost power, we’d lose heat, and that would probably mean we’d have pipes freeze and we’d lose water, too. We bought some bottled water to have on hand.

I started thinking about how I’d try to make the most of the fireplace. I came up with a plan to hang up blankets over the entryways of the room where our fireplace is, sort of enclosing it so the heat from the fireplace would mostly stay in the room rather than being dispersed throughout the house. We could use a lot less wood if we moved everybody into that single room and all slept there.

We have a big blanket that I had in mind for this; it’s probably big enough for a King- or Queen-sized bed, and it’s heavy enough to keep a lot of heat in. It’s not a little rinky-dink blanket, and it’s thicker than a curtain. As I started thinking about turning this blanket more or less into a giant curtain to help box in our living room, I’m not sure why, but I thought of the temple veil mentioned in the Gospels.

The temple veil was a big, thick curtain (probably multiple inches thick) that was used to separate the innermost sanctuary of the temple, the “Holy of Holies,” or the Earthly dwelling place of God’s presence, from the rest of the temple that was otherwise accessible to men. The veil was meant to illustrate the fact that sin separates humanity from the Lord’s presence.

In the New Testament, the veil is most famous for what happened immediately after Christ’s death. His passing was such a momentous event that it literally rocked the world and caused supernatural phenomena. Matthew 27:50-52 says And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks splitand the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life.

There’s no way I’d be strong enough to rip the blanket I was preparing to use, and it’s much smaller and thinner than the temple veil. The fact that the temple veil was torn apart from top to bottom, which could have been as much as 60 feet tall, is amazing! It’s symbolic of the idea that Jesus’ death provided a way to overcome the sin-caused separation. Because of Christ’s sacrifice, no longer are believers separated from the Lord’s presence. Only God could have torn the veil apart so completely while illustrating the symbolism so richly.

Well thankfully we still have electricity and we haven’t had to MacGyver any emergency heating arrangements. Even so, this exercise helped serve as a reminder of just how significant and powerful Christ’s death on the cross was for us.

I hope you’re all safe and warm, that you’re dug out of any frozen precipitation you may have received, and that you’re living confidently in light of what Christ’s done for you. God bless!

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How Dare You Remind Me of Something I Hate!

To me, little kids are fun. They say stuff with brutal honesty, they come out with some funny things, and they still think my lame party tricks are cool. When we were trying to figure out some kind of way to serve as a family in our church, we settled on volunteering in the child care area, which is chronically understaffed.

A little truth in lending here…I don’t mind getting down on the floor to play with kids, and I don’t mind holding a crying kid for a little while, but I’m not real great at leading a lesson or singing songs with them. I can commit to keeping them (mostly) safe during the worship service, but that’s pretty much it. If they have a hard time focusing on what I’m saying, my go-to is to distract them with bubbles. Well, all those factors collectively led to my assignment in helping out with the really young kids.

One Sunday some parents dropped off a little girl, and she was pretty tentative about the situation. I’m not sure if she had separation anxiety, or if she was just having a bad day, but as time went by, she became less and less able to hold it together. What started out as a general detachment and a barely audible “I want Mommy” turned into a full-blown meltdown. This kid was screaming. I normally try to give kids a lot of leeway to get settled down so their parents can come to church and have a bit of a respite while listening to the sermon, but this was not working out. We eventually paged her parents, but they took a long time to show up. In the meantime, the little girl got so disruptive that I had to take her outside the room because other kids were looking at her and starting to have their own lower lips quiver. I just walked back and forth in the hallway and held her until somebody showed up to get her. Nothing made her stop screaming, man. Finally her dad showed up to take her off our hands.

Now…I told you that story so I could tell you this one. Weeks later, I was working there in that same room again. Kids started coming in, and they got comfortable and started playing with the various toys around the room. Sure enough, the dad showed up with that same little girl. She looked hesitant as she peeked in. She looked around the room, looking for some kind of upside to what Daddy was asking of her. Once her gaze fell on me, that sealed the deal. She lost it and started crying right away, face turning red, tears falling down her cheeks, and starting with the yelling. Just the sight of me was enough to make her remember the screaming session from last time, and that set her off.

For better or for worse, sometimes you’ll remind people of someone or something which will be counterproductive to your goals. It may or may not have anything to do with you personally; you might just remind somebody of a person they have bad memories of. Even if they say or do offensive things to you, recognize that it’s not necessarily you they’re reacting to. Be open to the idea of taking a step back, swapping roles with someone else, or coming at the problem from a different direction. Your ability to let it roll off your back and take a different approach could mean the difference between success and failure.

Can you relate to a time this has happened? Leave a comment and share your experience!

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Provoking on Purpose

When I was a kid we played “Capture the Flag” in our youth group at church a lot. Our church’s yard had a sidewalk running right down the middle, and it made a great “no-man’s land.” We’d have people from both teams come right up to, and even walk along, the sidewalk. If you were standing on it you could set one foot into the other team’s territory without fear of being tagged out. As soon as you left the safety of the sidewalk, though, you were fair game.

We’d try different tactics to try to get an advantage over the other team. We’d have one or two people charge the boundary but stop before crossing it, drawing attention while someone further down the line raced into enemy territory. We’d swarm the boundary, but then have all but one or two people stop before crossing. The idea was to provoke the defenders to jump after these people, and then others from the horde would see their chance and join the assault while the defenders’ attention was diverted.

Usually there’d be a small handful of people on either team that were focused on strategy. You also had a portion who didn’t much care for strategy, but instead just looked for opportunities to start trouble. Then finally, you had what I’d call the “reluctant participants.” They didn’t really want to play this game, so they were just sort of enduring it until it was over.

Most of the provocative tactics involved coming right up to that line and ratcheting up the tension. The strategic thinkers didn’t intend to cross it, but they also knew that in the heat of the moment, there would be enthusiastic teammates who would take it upon themselves to muster up the extra zeal to do what others didn’t seem willing or able to do. For the strategists it was partly manipulation, but it was also partly to see if they could get anything useful out of the unplanned developments. If a teammate was able to grab the flag and get back, so much the better…the team won. If, on the other hand, they got hurt somehow during the assault, the rest of the team got to grandstand and point fingers at how aggressively and unsportsmanlike the defending team was playing. The manipulators of the group were able to crank up the tension, inspire others to “cross that line,” and if any of their teammates got hurt in the process, they’d be able to say “well this wasn’t my fault, I never told anybody to do anything like that.”

We’ve got the same kind of thing happening in protests all around the country. Right now the hot-button issue is whether to interfere with ICE operations. I’m not sure how to state this any clearer: the law is the law; if you have an issue with a given law, you should focus on getting it changed. Interfering with law enforcement operations is illegal; if you interfere, you’re guilty of a crime. You’re an accomplice. It shouldn’t be a surprise that you’ll be treated like a criminal during the response. When you resist or provoke law enforcement officers, they have no idea who you are, what your intent is, or how violent you are. Since they have zero insight into those things, if you get into a confrontation which looks to be escalating, they’re forced to assume you’re willing to escalate further and faster than they are. It’s a failure of common sense to ratchet up the tension with someone who’s legally authorized to use deadly force if they feel threatened.

Where I take issue is the politicians’ intentional manipulation of the masses. Did you ever see the classic movie “The Sting” with Paul Newman and Robert Redford? They were two con men trying to pull off a big score, and they had a large cast of supporting characters. They had a visual signal among those in the know…kind of a brushing of the finger along the nose. It was sort of a wink and a nod to others who were in on the con. Politicians seem to be intentionally cranking up the pressure on the issue, stopping just short of calling for violence. Their winks and secret signals tell the organizers to set the stage. The mob mentality which comes along with protests takes it from there, and those who are a little more enthusiastic than others end up crossing the line of safety.

This persistent state of elevated hostility is how we get assassination attempts and fatal confrontations with law enforcement. Then, after something tragic has occurred, people blame the other side of provoking the situation. This foments more tension and hate, further perpetuating the problem.

How do we stop the madness of this cycle? I’m not sure there’s a simple answer to that. First and foremost, don’t contribute to an angry environment. That goes for discussions at work, discussions among your most trusted inner circle, anywhere you go…attack ideas, not people. Squash or redirect discussions that focus animosity on people. Ideas, not people, should be the subject of criticism. Secondly, hold your elected officials accountable. The people you voted for shouldn’t be out there stoking an atmosphere of violence and be able to avoid responsibility for it. Let them know you don’t approve. This is an uphill battle, because hot-button issues are good for fund-raising; it’s often not in a politician’s best interest to tone things down or actually solve problems, because if you solve problems, you can’t run on them in the next election. You may need to call your elected officials’ office so often they start recognizing who you are by the sound of your voice.

As Americans, we enjoy a lot of freedoms. Not every country allows its citizens to criticize the government, or to assemble in protest. I think we’ve taken some things for granted and pushed things too far. We’re still fellow countrymen (and neighbors), even if we don’t always agree. Don’t buy into the idea that if someone disagrees with you, you have to write off everything about them. We can still get along with each other even when we see things differently, and that’s one of the hallmarks of being American, and one of the things that makes our country great.

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Ever Think You’d Be a Teenaged Millionaire?

I’d guess I was somewhere in the range of 12-14 years old for this one. Out of the blue, I got a letter in the mail from Publisher’s Clearing House or something similar. Whoever it was, it was a sweepstakes business, and the letter implied that I’d be winning a million dollars!

Of course I know years later that this was too good to be true, but back then, in the 1990s when things were simple and I was young (and a million dollars went a lot further than it does in the 2020s), I was completely taken captive by the idea. I set about planning what to do with all that money.

I decided my largest purchase was going to be a house that was for sale in the neighborhood where we lived. It might have even been right next door, I’m not sure. Once I figured that out, I broke out the JC Penney catalogue that came in the mail every year. Remember those? They were bigger than a phone book (hopefully you remember those, too). The catalogue had all kinds of home furnishings. I picked out a living room set with black leather couches, I think. I remember I also wanted to pick up a hot tub for the back yard. I dog-eared a whole lot of that catalogue’s pages. I don’t remember how I mentally got past the problem of being too young to make legal transactions like buying a house, or figuring out taxes, or being too young to even be able to drive a car. All that little stuff would surely get taken care of for someone with money!

I got pretty deep into this whole thing. Eventually my parents had to break it to me: “you’re not winning this money.” I think they showed me the original letter I received, and pointed out the fine print or the way the words for the announcement were chosen very carefully to make me believe I’d already won. Looks like I was going to have to figure out some other way to pay for the latest Michael W. Smith and Steven Curtis Chapman albums.

Hopefully reading from the Bible is a regular occurrence for you. If it’s not, try to make that a habit starting this year. Here’s something to watch out for though. English is not the language the Bible was originally written in. As you can imagine, not every word in the original languages directly translate to English. There’s a reason “lost in translation” is a common saying. Folks have been translating the Bible for quite a long time and they’ve put a lot of thought into this, but sometimes the reasons translators chose particular English words or phrases aren’t evident or explained. That’s where a study Bible can really come in handy. It explains some of those word choices, along with the context of why actions were so meaningful in light of the days’ traditions, and it often links related passages.

While a scripture-only Bible is wonderful, a study Bible typically brings much more understanding and context. In much the same way that I needed to have someone who understood the reality of “you’ve won a million dollars*” explain the asterisk to me, I find it to be enormously helpful to have a study Bible that breaks things down for me or explains it to me in an understandable way so I don’t make my own erroneous assumptions and accidentally sink my beliefs into something that’s simply not true.

Lord, thank You for giving us the written word. Help me find the right translation of the Bible I can readily understand, and the right tools to grasp the significance of what I’m reading. In Your name, Amen.

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Bad Ideas Just Come to Me; No Extra Thought Required

Have you ever had a lapse in judgment?

When I was a young teenager, probably 14 or 15, my church’s youth leader (Todd) dropped a couple of us off at the entrance to our development. It was December, so it got dark pretty early. I’d guess it was around 5:30 pm; we were coming back from weightlifting (gotta get huge, right?), and since our housing development was on the way back to where Todd was returning the van, he dropped two of us off.

I’m not really sure what I was thinking, but I guess I decided I’d be a bit of a clown, and after I exited the side door and started walking around the back of the van, a dumb thought entered my mind. “Wouldn’t it be funny if I jumped onto the back bumper when Todd started driving away?” I just assumed Todd would somehow know I was there, stop the van, and say “har har, wise guy…off.” Then I’d give one of those dopey teenage “shucks” laughs, and comply, then we’d both be on our way.

Well, I jumped up onto the bumper and held onto the back door’s handle (the handles were more solid back then than today’s handles).

He didn’t notice, though. He started driving away and didn’t slow down. Well, like any joke gone wrong, you just kind of want to make an exit with as little fanfare as possible. Since we weren’t going real fast just yet, I figured I’d just hop off. It was dark though, and I couldn’t see how fast we were going. In one of those “this probably isn’t a good idea but I’m going for it anyway” moments, I hopped off the bumper. As proof I was less than fully committed, I hung onto the handle, just in case.

Yes, the van was moving too fast for me to safely hop off. Once my feet hit the ground it became crystal clear that I wouldn’t be able to stay on my feet. They got pulled out from under me and I started being dragged behind the van, hanging onto the rear door’s handle with one hand.

The ratty old shoes I was wearing at the time were a little too big for my feet, and I distinctly remember one of them starting to come off. If I lost a shoe, that foot could have been subjected to some very nasty road rash, and I probably would have let go of the handle. By the good Lord’s providence, it slipped right back on when I turned my foot a different way. Truth be told, I don’t remember whether or not I started yelling for Todd to stop. My other hand held the jacket I’d brought with me, so I started whipping the van’s back door with it to try to attract Todd’s attention and get him to stop.

Right around that time, a car rounded the bend and started coming up behind us, and illuminated the situation with its headlights. I can’t imagine what that driver must’ve thought when he/she witnessed the scene.

Now, sometimes you do something dumb and you’re fortunate enough that nobody really finds out about it. At the time this happened, we lived in one of the corner houses in this development. When Todd dropped us off, all I had to do was cross the street and I would have been in my yard. The way events unfolded, if you had been on our house’s back deck, you would’ve had a great vantage point to seeing a van driving away with a kid hanging off the back, flailing his coat, illuminated by the headlights of a car following behind. Well, for some reason, my mother was back there and had a great view to all of this. That was probably a pretty horrific sight. Sorry Mom.

Well we probably only went 50 yards or so, and what felt like 50 mph in the dark was probably more like 20-25. A pretty confused Todd stopped the van, and as soon as it was safe, I let go of the handle and left the road for the safety of the grass. My shoes were noticeably more worn than they were 60 seconds ago, and were still warm from being dragged across asphalt. I don’t even remember if I gave Todd any explanation, or if I just waved a “thanks for stopping” and walked away. It was an incredible act of divine protection; my shoes took the only lumps of the evening and I walked away without a scratch.

I’m sure this was one of those moments where Mom wanted to both hug and strangle me. I don’t really remember walking in the front door or what Mom said, but I know she somehow saw things play out, because she’s brought up this event several times in the past. At the time, I probably just mumbled an “I’m fine, what’s the big deal?” in typical teenage boy fashion.

To the teenagers out there: you’re gonna do dumb stuff. Don’t do it on purpose, you’ll do plenty of dumb stuff accidentally. Your parents are going to worry about you, and they’re going to lose sleep over you. Sometimes when they just give you random hugs or tell you they love you, they’re not overreacting, they’re just thinking about all the ways things could have gone wrong and are simply glad you’re okay.

To the parents of teenagers out there: God bless you. Being the parents of littles is physically exhausting, while being the parents of teenagers is emotionally exhausting. I see why hair turns gray or falls out in this stage of life. Don’t let eye rolls stop you from telling those kids you love them and giving them extra hugs. Pray for them like crazy, and foster their spiritual development as they barrel toward adulthood.

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Should A Christian Support Israel?

Should Christians support Israel? Boy, there’s a can of worms.

Well, there’s a lot to it, but the short version is…generally yes. God gives both conditional (“if you do this, I will do that, but if you stop doing this, I will stop doing that”) and unconditional (“I’m doing this regardless of what you do”) promises. Genesis 12:1-3 contains an unconditional promise God gave to Abram when He told him what He was going to do through the man:

Now the Lord had said to Abram: “Get out of your country, from your family and from your father’s house, to a land that I will show you. I will make you a great nation; I will bless you and make your name great; and you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

I mean…there you go. The most neutral option you can take is to be indifferent about it, but if you go that route, you’re kind of avoiding behavior you know God wants to encourage (you just read it, taken right from scripture). So in this case, even neutrality is a form of disobedience.

Years later, Genesis 17:8 records God again talking to Abram (now Abraham): “Also I give to you and your descendants after you the land in which you are a stranger, all the land of Canaan, as an everlasting possession; and I will be their God.” You could say the descendants of Abraham have an everlasting divine claim to the land.

So how does that square with all the heat Israel’s been taking over the past few years with its involvement in Gaza?

Well, I wouldn’t say it’s complicated, but I’d say we have to zoom way out to look at history and the prophesied future of Israel. In the Old Testament, the Israelites’ disobedience led to their being kicked out of the land and taken as captives to foreign nations. They were eventually allowed to return, and they reestablished the country, though the temple was a much reduced version of its former glory. Skip ahead to the New Testament and the Israelites still occupied the land. The Romans controlled it, and they even destroyed Jerusalem in AD 70, after most of the New Testament was written.

But what about the events that have happened after Bible times? It’s been almost 2,000 years since the latest books of the Bible were written. There’s been plenty of time where God’s chosen people weren’t ruling, or even occupying, the land. More recently (say, around the year 1900) the land of Israel/Palestine was controlled by the Ottoman Empire, a Muslim state, who was not fond of giving up territory for the sake of establishing a Jewish nation. Its alliance with Germany led to defeat and subsequent loss of support after World War I, and the British began forcibly making room in Palestine for the Jews, making lots of enemies in the process. Skipping ahead to 1948, Israel became a nation again and has remained so ever since. The nation is currently run by a secular government; while many devout Jews (and some Christians) live there now, the term “Jewish” in Israel generally refers more to an ethnic term than to religious beliefs.

Here’s the short version: the Jews are God’s chosen people, and will one day fulfill His original desire of having them be the ones to proclaim the Messiah. In Romans 11:25-26, Paul notes a future mass Jewish revival…all of Israel will be saved. So that means there will still be a sizable Jewish presence at that time, but we don’t know any details of what occurs to the physical land of Israel between now and then. Israelites have lost control of it in the past and could very well do so again between now and the mass revival, we just don’t know.

So we know the land of Israel will one day undergo mass revival, and we know that hasn’t occurred yet. In the meantime, the country, like any other country, is ruled by imperfect people. They’ll make bad choices sometimes. We don’t have to agree with everything they do, but they should generally enjoy the support of Christ-followers (barring decisions that go against what we know God’s will to be, as in things that run counter to scripture).

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I Ordered One Thing But Got a Surprise Instead

I recently learned a lesson in forgiveness.

My wife and I were out for lunch, just the two of us. We don’t often get a chance to do that, and we always look forward to it. Ordinarily we don’t grab dessert when we’re out, but on this occasion I had been looking forward to a special treat. I had been anticipating it for days, actually; a gigantic slice of chocolate mousse cake topped with whipped cream. There was no way I could finish it in one sitting; it was something I planned to order knowing full well I’d have to bring at least some of it home.

Our server was very nice, and he answered whatever questions we had. We gave him our order and chatted while we waited for the food to arrive. I think we were even able to chat the whole time without talking about the kids. At last, he came with our food, but he mixed up our orders and put down the wrong plate in front of each of us. In hindsight, we should’ve just let him walk away and switch them after he left, but we let him know he had it backwards. He picked both plates back up and switched them, but in the course of swapping, he knocked over my glass of ice water, spilling the whole thing directly into my lap.

He apologized multiple times and started cleaning up the mess. I was irritated, obviously, but kept my cool and didn’t flip out on the guy or anything, and assured him that everything was fine. I’ve had bad days where I made mistakes and other people had to deal with the consequences of my bad choices, so I reminded myself of that and just tried to let things go. It was an honest mistake and the guy seemed genuinely sorry. I used a cloth napkin to try to soak up as much water as I could from my soggy pants, and was grateful it was just water and not something sugary or hot.

After the excitement died down my wife and I were able to start enjoying our food. At some point I started thinking ahead to that dessert I’d been looking forward to so much. Then it dawned on me that I might be able to snag it for free! They’d want to make it up to me after the inconvenience they put me through, right? There was a silver lining! As we neared the end of our meal, we didn’t want to stick around and have dessert at the restaurant, so I asked for the check and a slice of cake to go.

When the check came, I expected the dessert to be on the house, but there it was, marked as full price on the receipt.

Truth be told, I was a little miffed. I could have pulled the guy aside and said “look man, you kind of ruined my lunch here a little bit, don’t you think? What do you say you guys comp me the dessert?” I’m sure he would have made something happen, and if he didn’t, I’m sure the manager on duty would’ve cut us a break.

Yeah, I could have, but I just kinda got this sense, like somebody was saying “You forgave him. The relationship is restored. There’s no need for him to provide additional restitution. You know full well you intended to get that cake days in advance. They don’t owe you anything.”

That was a little deflating, but I begrudgingly acknowledged it was the right thing to do. We treated the guy as if he hadn’t spilled water on me, and we went on our way. After all, forgiveness shouldn’t come with strings attached, right?

Well, by throwing out this example of just how gracious I am, I’m pretty sure I lost my heavenly reward on this one. Even so, I’m hoping it’s somehow worthwhile to someone who reads it. Don’t take the wrong lesson away from this one (“what a sap…he should’ve made a bigger stink about it so he could’ve got what he wanted!”). No. Asking forgiveness can be hard, but granting forgiveness can be harder. If someone’s genuinely sorry, you gotta let it go. That doesn’t mean you need to be their best friend, and it doesn’t mean you can’t learn from your interactions. It just means you need to forgive them and move on with your life.

This Christmas season, is there anyone you need to settle accounts with, either asking for, or granting, forgiveness?