When the first missionaries came to Alberta, Canada, they were savagely opposed by a young chief of the Cree Indians named Maskepetoon.
Then he became a Christian.
Shortly afterwards, a member of the Blackfoot tribe killed Maskepetoon’s father.
Maskepetoon then rode into the village where the murderer lived and demanded that he be brought before him.
Confronting the guilty man, he said, “You have killed my father, so now you must be my father. You shall ride my best horse and wear my best clothes.”
In utter amazement and remorse, his enemy exclaimed, “My son, now you have killed me!”
And
he meant, of course, that the hate in his own heart had been completely
erased by this act of such total love and forgiveness.
Elizabeth Barrett was a poet who is best
remembered by her married name, Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
But her father had forbidden her to marry Robert Browning.
In fact, when she married Browning, he disowned her and never spoke to her again.
Still, each week for the rest of his life, she wrote him a letter from Italy where she and Robert had gone to live.
Not once did her father reply.
After his death she received in the mail a large box with each one of the unopened letters inside.
They are among the most beautiful letters to be found in classical English literature.
And perhaps, if her father had read her letters their relationship might have been repaired and restored. Though that never happened, it did not keep his daughter from weekly expressing her love and forgiveness.
He was a priest in the Philippines, a much loved man of God…but he carried a great burden, a secret sin he had committed in his youth.
He had repented…but he could find no peace, no sense of God’s forgiveness.
In his parish was a woman who deeply loved God and who claimed to have visions in which she
spoke with Christ and He with her.
The priest, however, was skeptical.
To test her he said, “The next time you speak with Christ, I want you to ask Him what sin your priest committed while he was in seminary.”
The woman agree.
A
few days later she came to the priest and told of the recent
conversation she had with Christ, and how she had asked Him what sin her
priest had committed those many years before.
“And what did He say?’ the impatient priest asked. “What did He say?”
He said, “I don’t remember.”
You see…what Christ forgives. He forgets.
Thomas Edison had been steadily working in his lab trying to develop a light bulb.
For 24 hours straight, he and his team of men had been laboring to finish what they were sure this time would work.
At the top of a set of stairs was the socket where the light bulb was to be installed.
It would then flood the entire room with light.
Why
he gave the precious object of so many hours of labor to a young member
of the team to carry up those stairs will never be known, but he did,
and as the lad climbed the stairs…weariness or nerves must have overcome
him… and he dropped it.
For 24 more hours the team worked to construct yet another light bulb.
And when it was ready…Edison turned and gave this second light bulb to the same young man to carry up the stairs.
They stood there clothed in their tattered grey uniforms; 25,000 survivors, many of them truly no more than boys.
The Civil War, which had killed over 600,000 from both the north and south, was finally over. But the hate on both sides had not been conquered.
So when the victorious General dressed in blue turned to those defeated soldiers and said,
“By the rules of war I can take your horses and you can have a long walk back home,” it was to be expected.
But when he continued, “I’m not going to do that. You’ll be needing them at plowing time.”
That was not expected.
No, it wasn’t a love feast.
But it was a moment of light after so much darkness. A glimmer of compassion amid so much tragedy.
And… once I had a vision. Well…as close to a vision as I imagine I will ever have…I saw a bearded man with tears dripping onto his seamless robe.
And I saw a parade of men walking by…a timeless parade for some of the dates I saw read BC and some read AD. And there were thousands of these dates to accommodate the thousands of wars that had been fought.
The men… were
dressed in all manner of uniforms…in all manner of designs…and some
wore beards and some were clean shaven…and the colors of their skins
were all the different shades God had created…but still they were all the same…people attempting to destroy other people.
A very sad parade of human behavior.
And I thought of all the wars where it was not thousands against thousands, but only two; a husband and wife, a parent and child, two church members, an employer and an employee, two former friends now enemies.
And I thought how all wars, large, medium and small…eventually come to an end…and how sometimes unfortunately the hates continue…
but also how sometimes there is reconciliation.
The special miracle times when hands put down swords and turn them into plowshares…And a tiny piece of earthly geography takes on a heavenly tinge… because two or more human beings deciding to live tall and sun crowned above the crowd.
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