Letting things go

Matthew 18:21-22 Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?” Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.

In the next 4 weeks of Advent, I have taken the four themes offered by the Methodist church and produced my own spin on what they say to me. Here is a link to the Methodist Church ‘Out of the Ordninary” campaign. We start with the theme, Letting things go!

 What are you like at letting go!

Corrie ten Boom told of not being able to forget a wrong that had been done to her. She had forgiven the person, but she kept rehashing the incident and so couldn’t sleep. Finally Corrie cried out to God for help in putting the problem to rest. "His help came in the form of a kindly Lutheran pastor," Corrie wrote, "to whom I confessed my failure after two sleepless weeks." 

"Up in the church tower," he said, nodding out the window, "is a bell which is rung by pulling on a rope. But you know what. After the sexton lets go of the rope, the bell keeps on swinging. First ding, then dong. Slower and slower until there’s a final dong and it stops. I believe the same thing is true of forgiveness. When we forgive, we take our hand off the rope. But if we’ve been tugging at our grievances for a long time, we mustn’t be surprised if the old angry thoughts keep coming for a while. They’re just the ding-dongs of the old bell slowing down.

“And so it proved to be” said Corrie. “There were a few more midnight reverberations, a couple of dings when the subject came up again in my conversations, but the force—which was my willingness to accommodate the matter—had gone out of them, and at the last they stopped.”

Advent season is an ideal time to let go and indeed let God. Steve Maraboli, an influential speaker says, ”The truth is, unless you let go, unless you forgive yourself, unless you forgive the situation, unless you realise that the situation is over, you cannot move forward.” 

Lord, I kneel before You in humble submission and pray that in Your mercy and kindness You would help me to simply let go of all the fears and worries, problems and doubts, guilt and disappointments that seem to be filling my heart and mind so often, during the course of a day.