Community is not possible without the willingness to forgive one another "seventy-seven times" (see Matthew 18:22). Forgiveness is the cement of community life. Forgiveness holds us together through good and bad times, and it allows us to grow in mutual love.
But what is there to forgive or to ask forgiveness for? As people who have hearts that long for perfect love, we have to forgive one another for not being able to give or receive that perfect love in our everyday lives. Our many needs constantly interfere with our desire to be there for the other unconditionally. Our love is always limited by spoken or unspoken conditions. What needs to be forgiven? We need to forgive one another for not being God!
It's a brave or bold thing to say, but much truth in it. Not being God is that we are limited. Some of the forgiveness, then is not forgiving things that are culpable in others, that they are personally and malevolently responsible for. In fact it's more recognising that we are expecting too much of them and becoming angry or cheesed off with them because they aren't fulfilling our [often unspoken] expectations. Going further; we are then brought back to the recognition that the blame really lies with us for having those expectations usually quite unreasonably. That we were expecting to be served rather than to serve. How great is Jesus' wisdom in holding being forgiven together with forgiving, all too often dealing with the one brings us face to face with the need to treat with the other.
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