Does it have limits?  Is there a portion where those boundaries need to be pushed in order to forgive?  Are people supposed to forget about what happened to them as if it never happened?  Or what would happen if you came face-to-face with a person that made your life so miserable - that you felt like giving up?  And final question before I launch into this message, what happens if you can't do it yourself?  Tough questions aren't they if people allowed themselves to think about it.  So for however long it takes for people to read this message, I want people to think about it as if it happened to you.

As people well know, I've written about my boarding school days which were not happy ones.  At night-time, whenever the lights were put out before people went to sleep, if anyone was caught talking whilst the lights were out, they had to stand in the corridor touching their toes until such time the teacher went off duty - which was 10 o'clock at night.  So if anyone was caught talking at 7 o'clock at night for example, it would be three more hours before you went back to bed.  And just before getting back into bed, three whacks of the slipper was administered before we were allowed to get back into bed.  And as people who read my stuff well know again, I had water poured all over my bed - then was forced to lie in it.  And going back to the slipper episode, I heard more whacks of the slipper in one night - than I ever did in a whole year when I was at home.  And believe me when I say this, but my dad was a strict disciplinarian when it came to us kids having to behave ourselves.  So I don't say that lightly as I write this, as 5 years at boarding school dictated the next 15 years of my life, some of which when I think about it - still angers me.  And to be truthful with people here, I don't know what my reaction would be if I ever came face-to-face with any of those people who did it to me.  Correction.  I did come face-to-face with one person about 5 years ago, and his reaction compared to my reaction were poles apart, as the last time I saw this person was about 35 years ago when we were in our early teens, and he talked about the good old days - where I only remembered the bad old days.  And when he tried to get chummy with me - I backed right off.  No way did I want to get involved with him - because of all the hurtful memories I had about things in the past about it.  So I won't even go into the name-calling that happened, because that affected me too.  And to this day, if anyone gets in my face in an unsavoury manner shall we say, my reaction is 10-fold compared to theirs, because nowadays it would be called child abuse.  But that's what people of my generation had to put up with whilst growing up as kids.  Now to enter the stride of my message, does forgiveness have boundaries.  First scripture to focus on:

Genesis 50:15 [NIV].  When Joseph's brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, "What if Joseph holds a grudge against us and pays us back for all the wrong we did to him?"

Good question isn't it?  That "What if" hides a whole lot of stuff when it happens to someone.  That "What if" has no boundaries, people don't know what people will do when if someone reacts to it, and nobody knows what the outcome will be if they reacted towards it.  Take note, I said towards it.  Take note of what happened next when Joseph heard the news.

Genesis 50:16-17 [NIV].  So they sent word to Joseph, saying, "Your father left these instructions before he died.  This is what you are to say to Joseph: I ask you to forgive your bothers the sins and the wrongs they committed in treating you so badly.'  Now please forgive the sins of the servants of the God of your father."  When their message came to him, he wept.

Question.  Was he weeping through the loss of his father, or all the wrong-doing that was done to him when he was sold into slavery - and they told his father that he was dead?  Looking at that "What if" again in another context, it carries a whole lot of burden when it happens to you, doesn't it?  Why?  Because if it hasn't happened to you, it would be easy to forgive. But when it does happen to you, that forgiveness takes on a whole new meaning.  If I were to put this part of the message in a nutshell, it can either strengthen people up - or tear them to pieces.  Now let me take it to another level.

Whenever I think about the boundaries of forgiveness, does that include child molesters?  Does that include murderer's as another example?  And here's that phrase again.  What if the only person who gets a life sentence for the crime - are the victims who have lost loved ones?  Pretty weighty situation isn't it when you think about it.  So let me now take it to another level.

Sometimes (not always) that forgiveness has to come from somewhere else.  Its not that people can't forgive, but the damage has been so imprinted on them - that they cannot forgive from a personal level.  So that forgiveness has to come from another direction in order for them to survive.  On the other-hand, if people harbour unforgiveness, its like taking a bitter pill - hoping somebody else will die, but the only person its killing - is you.  So I'm now going to focus - that when it happens to you - and no one else, how something has to bridge the gap - because they cannot forgive people themselves - because its too close for comfort in order to forgive.  In other words, it has to come from another direction other than from yourself.

There's been a lot of talk about forgiveness - and that people should always forgive, but that forgiveness has to come from the heart.  In other words, people have to dig deep within themselves else it will screw them up.  But it doesn't mean they forget about it.  As the years go by, the pain gets lesser and lesser.  So there comes a point in life - that although people remember it, it doesn't hurt as much as it used to, but there again it does - because if its serious enough, they will relive it as if it happened yesterday.  So before people go off on one, I want you to get your thinking cap on as I end this message.

Luke 23:34 [NIV].  Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they are doing."

That is the ultimate example that everyone goes by when something happens to them, and its cast out to everybody that they should do it.  But I looked at that scripture again.  Its says "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they are doing."  Does anybody see anything here?  If not, let me try and simplify it without trying to offend anybody (which it no doubt will), that forgiveness had to come from another direction, because with all the stuff that had happened to Him before that, and everything He was having to deal with at that point in time after that, it was a bit too close for comfort for Him to deal with personally and on a personal basis.  In other words, Jesus handed the whole situation over to God for Him to do it.  So I go back to partway through my message - that it is a heart situation, and in some instances - it has to come from a different direction than those it is affecting the most.

Without de-emphasizing what happened on the cross - which has never been my intention to do, whenever I think of events that have happened in my life, that forgiveness has to come from another direction - because I personally can't handle it.  And before people go off on one again, I know what it means to be forgiven. But that forgiveness had to come from another direction to enable me to handle it, because I know what happened to me - and so did that other person.  So if I were to put this whole message in a nutshell, it would go something like this: I hand the whole situation over to you God - because I myself can't handle it.  Why?  Because whenever I think about it, its too close for comfort.  So whenever a person says to someone, you've got to do it, think about the situation they're in and have faced. For some its easy, for some its not.  And for some (whenever they think about it) there has to be a bridge between it because they can't handle it.  Can anybody think what that bridge is when that happens?  I think that for some people who may be reading this, that bridge happens when they say "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they are doing" because they cannot do it for themselves personally and on a personal basis - because it is too close for comfort when people ask them to.  Last paragraph. 

Whenever a person asks someone to forgive someone, can we at least be honest with ourselves and tell them, I need somebody else to bridge that gap for me, because at this moment in time - I can't do it?  In that way - it gives them a bit of a gap, that in any given situation - people need that bit of a respite space to enable them to forgive that other person, when everything around them is telling them to give up and to not forgive.  All it needs is a bit of understanding for it to take effect - that it is not always as simple as saying those words "I forgive you" - and that it needs somebody else to say it for them for it to work.  And if I were to hone this message right down it its basics, if somebody else said "I forgive you" - it will enable you to forgive somebody else of what they have done to you when it happened.  And the quickest way to do it - is to forgive them straight away, and not let it hang around and fester for years - because that other person never said those words "I forgive you."  A lot of people suffer because they've never heard that phrase in their entire life, and there has to be something in the middle that bridges the gap because they can't handle it themselves personally.  And for risk of repeating myself, because its to close for people's comfort when they're in an uncomfortable situation. To add guilt and condemnation onto people that can hardly stand with what they already got - only makes that gap wider.  Maybe I should have titled this message "The Gap Between Forgiveness and Unforgiveness"  because in some circumstance - there certainly is one, but nobody sees it but the person themselves, and that's when people need to step in and do it for them - because they cannot do it for themselves.  Here ends my message.