Never Too Late With God

It may be too late with people, but never with God. 

Forgiveness is a funny thing with humans, but a very objective, thorough and complete thing with God.

So as we make peace, through Christ, with our demons, and turn over a new leaf in our process of regeneration, and begin once again to venture out amongst the people of our past as the healed, redeemed-from-our-nemeses-and-neuroses people that we are—“it," us—we may not be welcomed back. 

Now it is us who may be on the receiving end of the very same nemeses and neuroses that once drove our attitudes and actions. Or, other people may seek to indulge their own form of revenge or indifference to us.

Either way, the progress we’ve made with Christ is not trusted by them, or perhaps not even noticed (mainly because many who don’t know Christ don’t understand sin—mine or their own, and in fact even deny there is such a thing); or our growth and improved mental and emotional state may be despised. It might be resented because it didn’t come sooner, or because we were flawed to begin with. 

And when everyone, including us, takes everything personal, conflict and hurt feelings are seeded, bloom and become entrenched. It’s just a matter of whose court the ball of offense is now in. 

It is this very taking of things personal that Christ is and has been working to eradicate in my life, and the main reason I can, after 18 years of being born again in Him, indeed begin afresh now, free of much of the social and familial anxiety that has haunted and strangled me in the past. 

The blessing is that now when I see these same strangleholds in others, I don’t take it personally because these folks are simply where I once was. 

I have only compassion for them and can, through Christ, give them their space to lick their wounds, which, without Christ in their lives, will never fully heal. And even with Christ, can take a very long time to heal. 

My response is to pray that they, too, find Christ and freedom in Him from their priority of harboring offense. 

And that I will welcome them back when and if they ever want to be.

Copyright Barb Harwood