Walking the path

(2-minute read)

A man who worked in a fish packing plant would come to the Thursday night prayer meeting at church. Week after week, I remember being absorbed in prayer when a powerful scent of body odor and aging fish would fill the church. He had come straight from work; working in that environment daily had made it to where he no longer smelled the odor. He had done nothing wrong. No one ever said anything to him about the aroma. I did wonder, “Lord, if I never eat fish again, would you consider that judgmental?”

When I read about someone being unclean in the Bible, I think about that man often. People were often proclaimed as being unclean through no fault of their own. A simple skin rash, or if someone bled for any reason, could make them be considered unclean. Many of the laws concerning this in scripture started with medical reasons to prevent the spread of disease. Still, other things seemed so normal. In trying to put many of these together with modern understanding and language, it appears that, in general, if I suffer trauma, I would be unclean, and the Lord wants me to correct it. Being unclean seems to leave a more potent spiritual scent on us to the enemies of our soul than a fish packer in a prayer meeting, and it draws them to us to bring condemnation.

2000 years ago in Israel, if someone could not pay a debt, they could end up being an indentured servant or slave. If the person they owed money to decided to forgive them, he simply let them go. Forgiveness is that simple. That doesn’t mean he would ever loan them money again; he merely let the incident and debt go and let them have their life back.

Forgiveness is the only answer if someone does something wrong to me or hurts me. I can’t wait for them to say, “I’m sorry,” before I forgive them. That would put my spiritual life in their hands. Forgiveness isn’t just saying the words; it’s letting the incident go. I must give it to the Lord for him to do with it what he wishes and no longer be concerned with it. I have lived with some things for many years that caused me great harm and have only recently been able to turn them over to the Lord. The freedom I have received has gone far beyond what I ever expected.

Photo by Akshay Anil