When Forgiveness Is Faith, the ONLY Way Through!

When life has ended — in this very life — as if the life we thought we had either never was, or wasn’t anything like we imagined it — we are forgiven for feeling all but alive at all. The end has come, but the mortal body endures. This existence then begins to torture us! We are then thrown about by the swell and tossed about on the tips of waves. We hate our very being.

We never thought life (and God) could ever be this cruel.

Yet, alas, this is the life we have come to be situated in, for this season. On the dark clouds of betrayal is the vision so restricted we cannot see blue sky and we begin to believe it has vanished forever — perhaps it was always a figment of our imaginations?

Having given all we ever had to this project — a career, a marriage, a partnership — and to see the bottom fall out of it — to see it disintegrated on the floor — what has become of us? Is this the end?

“Surely, please God, make it the end. I cannot take it anymore!”

It’s not the end, but an important beginning.

The end has come to that manifestation of life, but a new life is now being prepared. Through the massiveness of anguish, that threatened our want of existence, there is being birthed in us the massiveness of life — a passion we never before had.

Birth is the perfect analogy. Birth is never a pleasurable experience. Only the worst of pain can it be, but I’m only a man, and I can only report what I’ve heard and been told.

As a woman gives birth to her baby, she might as well feel as betrayed as anyone has for being the recipient of such a cruel experience. But moments away is the bliss uncharted. Unencountered is the joy that is soon all hers!

That is the forgiveness she, alone, can bring through the birth canal, and into all her world. If all other barriers to reconciliation are removed, what could God be saying but to trust him with the rest?

Forgiveness is the faith to acknowledge it’s the only way through betrayal.

If all else is held open to our forgiveness, and God’s invitation is taken up, who are we to hold back?

If others’ healing is held captive to our own fears, will our torment justify theirs?

We have the privilege in preferring peace; their peace is also the restitution of ours.

© 2015 S. J. Wickham.