Devotion:
Read Matthew 18:21-35.
It’s one of those stories that makes you shake your head in disbelief. Don’t miss the radical nature of it. The amount of money the first servant owes the king is an amount nobody could ever pay. (A “talent” was equal to fifteen years of wages and that is to be multiplied by the largest number you can imagine - which is the real meaning of the number 10,000 here.) So this guy has a debt which nobody could ever repay. He is doomed. He has no hope. Then everything changes. The king forgives the whole debt! He is debt-free, given new life. You would think that he would have a new approach to life; that he would want to be as generous and forgiving as what had been shown to him. Not this guy! He sees this guy who owes him about three months worth of wages (a significant amount, but a tiny drop in a huge bucket compared to what he owed the king); and he refuses to forgive this man of his debt.
It just seems ridiculous to think that anybody anywhere would be that way. But wait! Through Jesus Christ, God forgave us of the debt we owed God that we could never pay. And sometimes, we find it hard, if not almost impossible to forgive others for things that might be of some significance, but do not compare to what we owed God. Maybe that story is not so ridiculous after all.
Personal Worship Option:
Carol Owens wrote one of the songs in our hymnal, the chorus of which says this:
“He said, ‘Freely, freely, you have received, freely, freely give.
Go in my name, and because you believe, others will know that I live.”
That certainly applies with giving financial resources. But it also applies to love and forgiveness. Give thanks to God for the many ways you can give (including forgiveness) because of how God has given to you.
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