This week at girls club, we tackled a topic that was near to my girls' hearts.
Forgiveness.
Something that many of them have been told to do over and over, but not something that they necessarily understood. Or even wanted to do.
I told them the story of Hephzibah. The wife of King Hezekiah. An idolater.
King Hezekiah made reforms in Judah that drew his people back to God, after his father had driven them as far the opposite direction as he could. And his reforms were applicable to his wife as well. Hephzibah came from a pagan family, and she worshiped idols like Baal and Asherah.
The King told her that she could no longer worship her idols. She could only worship the Living God. Hephzibah quickly agreed, eager to please her husband.
But she lied.
After King Hezekiah found out, he divorced her and sent her away. He didn't want a pagan queen setting that example for his nation.
Many years later, the prophet Isaiah set Hezekiah straight in his thinking. Who was he to hold back forgiveness? Wasn't the King just as much an idolater as Hephzibah? Didn't he sign a treaty with Egypt and Babylon because they fattened his ego?
The King's heart was so convicted that he went back and asked Hephzibah's forgiveness. And because of that act, Hephzibah was shown the love of God. She renounced her idols, became a believer, and was remarried to King Hezekiah.
How often do we act in the same manner as the king? How quickly do we point the finger at something else, and hold a grudge against them, but fail to see our own retched hearts? How earnestly do we want to be forgiven for our sins, yet can't seem to extend that grace to someone who has wronged us?
It's part of this condition we all have called sin.
But God commands us to forgive one another. Not just when we feel like it, but all the time. Even when we don't want to. Even when it's hard. Even when it seems impossible.
My girls have a lot of people to forgive. And a lot of things to be forgiven for. We all do.
I explained to them that God is ready and waiting for us to come to him humbly, and to ask forgiveness. He isn't stingy, and won't hold out on us. He will give us the grace and freedom that we don't deserve if we just ask. Because Jesus died on the cross, we are given unconditional forgiveness and love.
We just have to ask.
So that's what we did. Maybe a bit unconventionally, but we did.
I drew a large cross on a poster board. Then I tore up paper into small pieces and scattered it around the room. I told my girls to pick up several pieces of paper and a pen.
I told them to write one of two things on the paper. Either someone they need to forgive for hurting them, or something that they have done that they need to be forgiven for.
They were a little timid at first. One of my girls, Premshila, told me that she thought it would be too hard to forgive those who had hurt her. She was afraid she couldn't do it. I told her that the cool thing is that we can't do it. Not on our own. We need God's help to forgive others.
I told them that once they put a name or a sin on the cross, it was forgiven. God knows their hearts, and he knows their need to forgive others and to be forgiven. Once I told them that, they all scrambled for the paper pieces to write on.
These girls are amazing. They wrote down sins like having an angry heart and being disrespectful to their teachers.
But who they forgave was more amazing.
People like mom and dad, who either abandoned them, gave them up, or passed away. Aunts and uncles who may have done the same things, or who may have hurt them in other ways. Friends who had lied to them and teased them.
I so badly want to be like these girls. Who forgive easily, even when it's hard. And who feel the weight lifted off their shoulders once they have.
Forgiveness is waiting for us in the arms of Christ. We just have to run to him and ask for it.
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