“Thanks for being a sojourner with me in this messed up life we live.” A young friend of mine sent me this message the other day.
His battle was my battle, and it’s your battle too. In a word, the battle is forgiveness.
He had suffered a very real and awful wrong. The perpetrator, a trusted friend, had shown no remorse.
I had an amazing experience the other day. If a miracle is a direct intervention of God in the ordinary course of events, that’s just what it was. Maybe not the biggest miracle you could think of, but still a miracle.
I was praying and fasting. In mid-afternoon, I was sitting in the car by the bay asking God to resolve a specific situation. In mid-prayer, my phone buzzed. When I saw who it was from, I checked it only to discover the message was that my prayer had been answered.
Yesterday I turned 65. I don’t believe I’m that old, but neither the calendar nor my 97 year old mother lie. Here’s another statistic. I have been in Christian leadership now for 44 of those years. I started leading a student group at the University of Toronto at the age of 21, and never managed to escape leadership in one form or another. I have at long last laid down local church leadership, but have exchanged it for something that in the end will probably prove more demanding yet.
I have been struggling for some time with what I call the limits of love.
I think a couple of things set me off on this thought. I have several friends in different countries fighting very serious health battles. Others are going through various awful challenges that life has thrown at them. How about someone with an aged father wrongfully accused of a crime and who has to sit through a lengthy court battle to clear his name? That was just last week.
