“Pharaoh” was the title of the king of Egypt. He had held the people of Israel captive for so long they almost lost all hope of being free again.

Moses was an Israelite who had found favor with the Pharaoh’s daughter when she discovered him as an infant in the bulrushes. He was subsequently raised in the Pharaoh’s Palace. But royal training did not drain Moses of his Israelite blood.

Ramses was Pharaoh of Egypt. Even as a young man he was harsher than his father had been.

Moses was mistakenly known among the Hebrew People as an “Egyptian Prince” and was thought to be a murderer. It was no simple task for him to gain his people’s confidence and to remind them of the God many of them had long ago forgotten.

With the eloquent assistance of his brother, Aaron, and some mighty miracles, many people came to believe that Moses was called by God to lead His people out of Egyptian bondage.

One of the high dramas of Biblical history is Moses going to the Pharaoh and speaking with authority that no one else could muster. God sent Moses to Pharaoh saying, “Let my people go, that they may serve me.” (Exodus. 7: 16). And Pharaoh  refused until ten pledges later. Ten plagues! ! ! (Because of his reply we’ve been laughing at Pharaoh for thousands of years.)

If you ever wish to read a handsome list of plagues, Pharaoh’s is it:

• first, the Nile became polluted
• then frogs infested the land
• then came gnats
• flies
• plague
• boils
• hail
• locusts
• darkness
• and finally, the death angel came and took the firstborn of every Egyptian family.

Pharaoh was stubbornly holding out regardless of successive plagues. Ten plagues ravaged the land before the porcelain heart of Pharaoh could be softened.

I personally identify most with the plague of frogs. I had an in depth encounter with a bunch . . . no, I had an existential experience with a bunch of frogs the night I went frog gigging with my brother-in-law. We caught and killed sixteen to eighteen bullfrogs and put them in a sack. We brought them back to the farmhouse and began to extract them from the sack so we could prepare frog legs for cooking. To our amazement, we discovered that all of the frogs were still alive—we had only stunned them. And so, we were very careful about taking them out of the sack—one at time. That was working great until someone let the sack slip, spilling the frogs onto the floor. One frog jumped, and dehumanized the entire kitchen—there was not a person  to be found anywhere in sight. It was terrible! Can you imagine frogs jumping everywhere—half dead, half alive! They were jumping wildly in every direction! They were on the kitchen counter. They were in chairs, They were in the bedroom; the living room and the dining room. They were  under the sink. A child’s pajama bottom came hopping along, loaded with a big old frog. Everywhere we looked, there were frogs,  frogs. Frogs!

I learned something about frogs that night. You can’t look a frog in the face and tell what he’s thinking about which way to jump! Talk about free will! A frog jumps where it wants to, when it wants to, how far it wants to—and asks no questions!

After we regained our senses the biggest problem we had was to determine how many frogs we originally started with so we would know when we had recovered all of them.

And so it was for the Israelite People. except we had a sack-full and they had a plague! They had frogs all across the land! Frogs everywhere! The Scriptures say they had frogs in the beds, in the bedchambers, in the servants’ quarters. They had frogs in the kneading bowls and the ovens. Frogs everywhere! Do you get the picture?

Finally, Pharaoh threw in the towel. He said, “I’ve had enough! Take away the frogs!”

Well, Moses was no dummy. He had presence of mind to ask Pharaoh, “When do you want the frogs destroyed?

And Pharaoh said, “Tomorrow!”

“Tomorrow? Did you say tomorrow? Why not today? Why not tonight? Why not right now? Why wait until tomorrow?” Can you imagine it? (You can’t unless you’ve lived among frogs like Pharaoh and I have!)

Here we are, today! We live with many kinds of frogs of many kinds of frogs. Frogs of disillusionment, broken homes and relationships, hurt feelings. There are frogs of purposelessness and spiritual poverty.

We don’t have to live with frogs of any kind, because Christ came that we might have an abundance of the best—not the worst! When do you want it? When do you want the full life God intends for us? Tomorrow? Do you really want to wait until tomorrow?

When the National Association of Procrastinators held their annual meeting in Miami, the President of the Association was late to the opening session. Their Vice-president wasn’t there because he failed to put the meeting date on his calendar. They got the meeting underway the next day with the use of a borrowed Kiwanis gavel because the former Secretary had not transferred the club paraphernalia to her successor. The hottest item on the agenda was why the Liberty Bell had cracked! They discussed various possibilities that might have caused the crack, but postponed a final decision until the next annual meeting. They did decide to throw a picket line around Independence Hall to prevent additional Liberty Bells to be manufactured until the matter was settled. No date for the picket line was set. The next meeting was set for three or four—or even five years from then.

We expect that kind of performance from professional procrastinators.

There is no excuse for a congregation to procrastinate in specializing in spiritual vitality! How many churches have dried up within it’s soul, waiting for their ship to come in: the coming of a new pastor, beginning a new building, or being debt-free? All the while, it is waiting to be the church, someday, and refusing to be the church, now!

If the church’s mindset is to wait to function or serve until times and circumstances are favorable, the cross does not belong in it!

None of us have hearts as hard as the Pharaoh’s. Yet, some of us have heard the call of Christ and said, with stubborn procrastination, “I think I’ll wait until tomorrow.”

God have mercy on our souls and keep us from spending “One More Night with the Frogs.”

Note: When I wrote this document in January of  ’99, all of us were living in a different world. Because of the terrorist attacks, forgiveness is more of a top-rated subject than it has ever been in my lifetime. These pages gather many insights on forgiveness that have sustained me across the years. The additional content highlighted near the end is my prayerful effort to express recently required new thoughts about forgiveness.

THE ANATOMY OF FORGIVENESS

We want to forgive! We are forgiving! We have forgiven!

We are free!

The woman was devastated that her husband had been unfaithful in their marriage eleven years ago. When he died last year she had not been able to forgive him—or had not wanted to. Because she has not, and felt she cannot forgive, she is hooked on hurt and hate. These negative powers have taken over her life and she is an emotional cripple. She said she can’t relate to her children nor even to her grandchildren.

Many people have told her that she must forgive her husband or she will never be free from him. She agrees that she must forgive, has tried to, but has been unable. A painful hurt has been hooked into her spirit for more than eleven years. A visible result of her inability to forgive is the deep scowl that is etched into her face. Her countenance is empty and forlorn. One wonders how long it has been since she laughed. If it had been possible, she would have dealt with his betrayal at the time it happened, but she could not forgive. During the intervening years she has found no way to forgive, and when he died outside of her forgiveness, it was like another nail had been driven into the coffin of her “un-forgiveness.” She now feels she is permanently enslaved to her husband and she has the scowl to prove it. Everything about her story, her sense of  brokenness, and her appearance cries out, “What can I do?”

NON-STICK ANSWERS

Many non-stick answers have been offered for her devastating question:

• You have to forgive your husband . . .
• Forgive him for what he did . . .
• Forgive him for hurting you so deeply . . .
• Forgive him for dying before he was forgiven . . .
• Forgive him for lashing you into a seemingly permanent enslavement to a hurtful wrong!

All of these are non-stick answers—every one. She continues to weep in deep anguish over her version of a question many people before her have asked, “How do I forgive when I can’t?” I have no soft, or easy, or final answer, only tough experiences and some discoveries along the way.

HARD SAYINGS ON FORGIVENESS

Her question prompts a hard saying spoken by many friends, “You have to forgive!” Let me say it even stronger, “You must forgive! To forgive is often difficult and even painful. But not to forgive has downward-sucking consequences.”

Not to forgive means that one is forever lashed to the person or the deed.

Not to forgive creates a permanent enslavement to the heinous memory.

Not to forgive drains away the rest of one’s life.

So, not to forgive is unthinkable!

FORGIVENESS EXPERIENCED

Rosalie and I have stood on the brink of non-forgiveness. Nothing has produced in us a greater sense of panic. Since I am not there now, I can see some things that helped when I was there.

First: I realized that tough forgiveness is possible. Many people have forgiven worse things than I have faced.

Second: I discovered that forgiveness is a science. Certain attitudes are necessary in the process of forgiveness because they are causal. For example, one begins with an intention to forgive. Although that intention may initially be tentative and non-active, that is the place to begin, because it causes something else to happen. A growing intention to forgive creates a desire to forgive. Unless forgiveness becomes a desire of one’s heart, forget it—which is exactly what you will do! A desire is far more powerful than an intention, because an intention may be flighty or flimsy. But, if there is a desire to forgive, it is solidly anchored within me.

Desire is causal, because it is strong enough to enable action, and action is an essential part of forgiveness. Forgiveness is never passive or docile, and it does not just happen when we are not looking. Forgiveness does not drop out of the blue into our laps. Forgiveness happens as a direct result of something we do. Our forgiveness of another requires that we are totally involved in the process.

Third: I discovered that there is also an art to forgiveness.When Rosalie and I were first married we experienced a deep hurt from a close friend. He defiled our relationship by willfully spreading the rumor within the congregation I served that our first child would be born out of wedlock. We laughed when we first heard the rumor because we had not had sex before our marriage. He persisted with the rumor and the result became ugly and hurtful. In the end, almost ten months was close, but O.K. Close is good enough in pregnancies and horseshoes.

As I later reflected on the episode, it was like we were standing before an empty canvass and we could choose what to put there—our broken spirits, despair, hate, unceasing anguish—or what? Instead of those, we chose to take it in stages. . . like an artist applies paints. Rather than being eaten up with hate and its resulting hurt, we chose to forgive. This was all we knew to do at that time. It seemed best to forgive him and move on. For several weeks our intention to forgive was our only place to stand, so we began to try to do it.

Eventually, after many weeks, we could say, “We have forgiven him.” We severed our relationship with him, but not because we hated, or even disliked him. We had learned to stay away from a very hot stove. This happened nearly forty years ago. Because we made the right choice of what to put on our canvas, we have had forty years of freedom from a terrible and hurtful betrayal of close friendship.

We used four colors from our artist’s palate. At various stages of our experience of forgiveness we could say. . .

• We want to forgive.
• We are forgiving.
• We have forgiven.
• We have freedom from the hurt.

We learned that there is an art to forgiveness and that forgiveness is a beautiful picture that is worth painting.

FOURTH: Previously, we said forgiveness is a science, and that it is also an art; but ultimately, forgiveness is a gift from God that provides a person the mystical power to forgive. There are attitudes to hold, steps to take, conditions to meet, and accomplishments to attain, but all of these are only preparatory to receiving the gift of the power to forgive, which God is eager to give to the brokenhearted. One does not have to “line up the stars,” or take a few steps, or jump through certain hoops. We don’t have to reach down and grunt up a portion of forgiveness! Forgiveness is a spiritual gift!

How we can forgive when we can’t forgive is through the gift of a spiritual power beyond human capacities. Forgiveness-power is an ultimate form of spiritual power. It is a power to be prayed for: ” . . .forgive us for our sins even as we forgive those who sin against us. . .” It is a power to be coveted! Here is an eternal truth: God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, all the Company of Heaven, and people around you, want you to receive God’s gift of the power to forgive!

UPDATE

A FORGIVING SPIRIT IS ESSENTIAL. The attacks on September 11 have stretched the capacity of all of us to forgive. The acts are so totally irredeemable, they are clearly beyond my forgiveness-capacity. Only God can give me grace to even consider forgiveness of this horrific experience.

A forgiving spirit is essential. A visitor in our home said, “I don’t do forgiveness!” She said this three times in a relatively brief afternoon visit. Saying, “I don’t do forgiveness” is far worse than saying, “I can’t forgive.” Unless we are saying, “I don’t do forgiveness,” there is hope for us as we struggle to do it. Any one of the previous listings will help us to eventually forgive: intending, desiring, acting to forgive; realizing that forgiveness is possible, practicing the science and the art of forgiveness; praying to receive the gift of forgiveness. All of these are essential. Some of us will struggle longer than others to forgive terrorism.

WHAT SOME PEOPLE HAVE DONE

The Alcoholics Anonymous book says time and again: pray for the best for the person. . . pray that all of his/her needs will be met . . . pray for the total well-being of the person. . . continue to pray until, when you think of that person, you think only of her/his good.

It may be that the gift enabling us to forgive—especially in touch situations—is God’s favorite gift to give us!

“But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. Matthew 6: 6 NRSV.”

In the weeks following the terrorist attacks we spent lots of time in our “prayer rooms.” This has been my most difficult time to pray. I feel such consuming anger about what happened on September 11, and when I pray, my anger is right there in me.

ANGER

Some years ago there came a little book entitled, “Can I Hate God?” The answer it offered is that it is better to get negative feelings out, rather than pretend they are not present, or try to subdue or ignore them. Instead of leaving them inside where they can fester, offer them up in prayer. The clincher was that “God can handle your hate better than you can!” God can handle our anger—even when we are praying!

EMPTINESS

Right after “911,” I was in my prayer room and was feeling empty. Prayer was difficult. No words were adequate and I often felt empty. Prayer was so difficult. I no longer had words. At a spiritual retreat I asked God to give me a word!

The word I was given is presence: my presence to God; God’s presence with me in this hurtful time; our presence—together in the world; our presence to others. Now, presence is present with me more and more frequently.

MEMORIES

There is one dreadful memory that keeps popping up when I wish to pray—and at other times during the day. I see the image of the Twin Towers engulfed in smoke and fire as they began to crumble with all of those people inside. I suppose that picture will always be with me, and perhaps I should not pray that the memory be erased. I have been praying for God to heal that dreadful memory so that some of the sting be taken away so I can bare it. There is great value in praying for the healing of memories.

FORGIVENESS

It is so difficult to pray for a spirit of forgiveness for those evil deeds. I can pray for justice to rain down upon those men, but for me to be able to forgive what they did—it is not coming easily.

Three years ago I wrote a document on The Anatomy of Forgiveness, “How Do I Forgive When I Can’t?” I had no idea that it would be so prophetic of the situation I now face. Although it’s difficult to forgive, I am praying that God will give me the mystical power to do it.

SILENCE

Now, when I am in my “prayer room”—whether kneeling, walking, sitting, or driving—I am often aware of profound silence. No words. No images. No thoughts. Silence!

Silence in prayer is not non-prayer. Silence is often my most profound experience of prayer—when there are no words to speak, no petitions seem adequate, no intercessions are complete enough! Nothing but silence!

At such times, I think of Father Robert, a Benedictine monk who sits in silence before the Blessed Sacrament for long periods each day. His vocation is prayer, and his prayer is frequently the “prayer of silence.”

When we asked why he prays like this he said, “I have but one ambition in my life. I want to grow old loving God!” When I find there is nothing but deep, deep, silence in me, I eventually wish to pray, “I, too, want to grow old loving God!”

“To pray or not to pray?” is not the question. How do we pray when we can’t? That might be the most important question we ever ask about prayer. We may take a lifetime to answer, and that question may deepen our prayer life more than any other.

The first time I went camping with our family was the worst time. We rented a camper and pulled it from Florida to the mountains of North Carolina and spent two weeks camping. We are not generally given to impulses, but we had two hours planning for the trip. It was a delightful experience, except that it rained for ten of the fourteen days.

We were totally unprepared for the aquatic dimension of our vacation trip. I hung my trousers, cuffs up, between a support rod and the canvas top of our camper. During the night it rained, and my pants were wet about halfway down—or halfway up after I put them on. I was totally unprepared for camping.

We were able to keep our cool because of the funny-looking people who were camping. One man had golf-ball knees. We are positive a lady had ball-bearing eyes, and a swivel jaw. An older guy had built a box on wheels and treated it as a camper. The box was about four feet by eight with three-foot sides. He did everything in that box: he ate, slept, cooked, bathed, rested, sat . . . I mean he did everything you do when camping—in that box—right out in the open!

I guess I was funny-looking to other people. I had such a helpless feeling standing before a mirror in the shower room when the valve on my aerosol shaving can began a slow-leaking discharge. I was in a nice camping area, and I didn’t want to be messy. But what do you do after ten minutes of a seemingly endless flow of lather that can’t be stopped? (I had filled several lavatories and all of the trash cans.) I felt a deep inner compulsion to announce to everyone who saw my plight, ”The silly thing won’t stop!” It felt good just to say that.

Our kids had the laugh of the trip when they saw I couldn’t stop the ozzing! The only reason they left me was to run to the camper yelling, “Mom, you won’t believe the fun thing Dad is doing!”

Every campsite we went to advertized at the front entrance, “All the wood you want!” It was unseasoned oak wood, so nobody wanted much. By the time we arrived it had been saturated with water for several days. I spent long, lonesome hours out under the elements in the cold and rain on a North Carolina Mountain trying to get wet, green oak wood to perform its natural duty.

I had a rented Coleman stove. I thought it would be a faithful ally against the wilds of nature. With more enthusiasm than genius, I turned up both burners of the Coleman. I took all of the available wood that was lying around and piled it on top of the stove, and sat there to watch it do its thing! Finally, when gas tank was empty I uncovered the stove. I found that the wood might have been pieces of steel. Not even a sliver was burning.

Toward the last of the trip, I was attempting once again to do the impossible. It was almost dark and gently raining. I was in my place, beside a wet woodpile, carefully striking my gofer matches—I would strike one and gofer another! My last match was spent. There I sat, wet, dejected and defeated.

I sat there in near darkness looking at that pile of wood while shining a flashlight on it. About that time, Rosalie came out of the camper. She was warm and dry, and looking cozy. She sat down near me and said, “What are you doing?” I said, “I’m shining a flashlight on a woodpile.” Rosalie always wants to be helpful. She asked, “Do you think that will get it to burn?”

I said, “Honey, you’d better get back inside the camper!” (If she had said one more word to me—one more word—I was going to see how many pieces of green, wet oak wood I could throw at one time!) She went back inside and left me to my thoughts. I sat there, shining a flashlight on a wood-pile.

Then it hit me! For many weeks I had spent lots of time thinking about the Holy Spirit, and my church, and about my people, and about my life. I had been trying to find an image about how all of these were interrelated. I was trying to get some picture, some visual image, of where we were, and hopefully the direction I needed to go.

Here was the image! What I saw was the church! That pile of wood was like my church—and perhaps like yours! We gather around the church Sunday after Sunday, week after week. We are waiting for the church to do something. But it will never do anything if all we have is light! Oh, we have light! In every generation the church has had the light of the Gospels.

That night I had light. What I wanted was fire! What would I have given for fire!

That’s what the church wants; what it needs! It has light, and has had in every generation. But in a few generations it has also had fire!

Picture the wood as the disciples. After the crucifixion, the disciples deserted Jesus to the man—you know it’s true! In the garden, do you remember what Jesus did? Read John 17. Jesus bragged on, and prayed for, and claimed for his own, that rag-tag bunch of disciples who were asleep when they should have been praying—as he had requested.

Oh! were they like a woodpile! The minute Jesus died, they deserted—everyone of them. Even after the Resurrection—the Resurrection—they returned to their trades.

In Jesus’ farewell address he said, “Stay in the city until you are clothed with the power from on high.”

“Power from on high!” Three hundred times in the New Testament, the Holy Spirit is associated with dunamis—dynamite. That power began to manifest at Pentecost. That’s the fire!

And the woodpile? The disciples (the church in embryo)! Jesus didn’t brag on them because of their present actions, but because of the direction they were heading.

He saw them as a woodpile—but he also knew that when the Holy spirit fire of Pentecost ignited them, they would become dynamite! And that is exactly the way it happened.

The joy of being in the light is not enough! This doesn’t mean that the light is insufficient. It means that light is one required manifestation that prepares us to move into yet a necessary, deeper, manifestation. If it were not for the light of the Gospels, none of us would ever see clearly the direction we should go. By walking through the light, you and I can experience the fire of the Holy Spirit. 

Let the people say, “Let’s Do It!”

Wisdom and knowledge are vastly different.

One thing we are not short on is knowledge.  If knowledge could do it, we would easily become the wisest people who have ever lived.  Because we are a knowledge-based society, we have people and machines that can handle almost unlimited data.  “Our world” is filling with books that flood us with almost more knowledge than we can tolerate.  The Internet is equipped to virtually inform us about any facts or figures. Knowledge is a tool that helps us to understand the facts.  Because knowledge is morally neutral, it can accommodate good data or evil.

But wait—knowledge will not make us wise!  There is an exacting difference between knowledge and wisdom.  We are steeped in knowledge.  Think of what we could be if we become steeped in wisdom!

Wisdom is the ability to discern or judge what is a true, right, or lasting insight.”  “It is the ability to make Godly choices.”  (Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart, How to Know the Bible For All Its Worth, 2^nd ed. Zondervan, 1993, p. 206.

Kenny Reece reminds us that wisdom provides understanding about the proper action to take in a given situation.  Wisdom is the ability to evaluate the facts in “the big picture.”   “Wisdom provides understanding about what is one’s station in life, and then how to act accordingly.”  Wisdom combines a special type of knowledge with a related type of action.”