Thursday’s Devotion: You Ate Too Many Hotdogs!

Eph 4:31-32  Let there be no more bitter resentment or anger, no more shouting or slander, and let there be no bad feeling of any kind among you. Be kind to each other, be compassionate. Be as ready to forgive others as God for Christ's sake has forgiven you.

Yesterday morning Kathie Lee Gifford related a story about her daughter Cassidy when Cassidy was about three years old.  The Giffords were giving a party and had hired a pianist.  The pianist was a rather large man.  Sometime during the evening Cassidy approached him and said, “You ate too many hotdogs.”  Someone nearby alerted her mother who, trying to teach Cassidy a lesson on kindness told her to tell the pianist she was sorry.  Cassidy obediently said to the man, “I’m sorry you ate too many hotdogs.”
The concept of asking for forgiveness and forgiving others is a difficult one for adults much less children to sometimes grasp.  It’s so easy to hold resentments or to choose to “forget” the offense.  But forgetting isn’t the same as forgiving.  Scripture tells us not just to forgive but to retaliate with kindness.  That’s so foreign to our human instincts.
1 Pet 3:9 says, “Do not repay wrong with wrong, or abuse with abuse; on the contrary, retaliate with blessing, for a blessing is the inheritance to which you yourselves have been called.”  The second part of this verse reminds us that God has blessed us with undeserved forgiveness – we call that grace.  To hold resentments or bitterness and un-forgiveness against another is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.  It hurts us more than it hurts them and it hurts our relationship with God.

God of Grace, thank you for forgiving our sins, our blunders and our frailties. Please remove bitterness from our hearts and help us to forgive those who have harmed us; remove pride and help us to ask for forgiveness where we have harmed others. We ask in the name of the one who died so our sins might be forgiven and forgotten. Amen.