December 2010

Dear Family of Faith,
The Season of Giving is soon upon us. Already last week I received a Christmas letter! [I just don’t get how some people can be so organized! Getting a Christmas letter before Thanksgiving is like writing your own obituary before you even get sick!] Every day between now and December 25th the clock ticks off one more chance to buy that “perfect gift” for those we love. Some of us are at such a loss as to what to give to those who ‘have everything’ that we scour the Sunday ads, hoping that something will perk our interest as a possibility. I’ve been thinking about buying everyone on my list a gift box of Burt’s Bees lip balm this year—I just saw it advertized in the CVS ad. I bet nobody else will be giving them that! I’m not really going to buy a case of lip balm, but sometimes I just don’t know what people would enjoy or need.
What do people need for Christmas? According to the Bible, Jesus is what we need. His very name expresses it. In Matthew’s Gospel (1: 21) the angel tells Joseph that Mary will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins (Jesus means “Savior”). What we need is to be rescued from our sins. How, then, does that have anything to do with us? Simply this: because we are forgiven by God, we are called to forgive others. This Christmas why not give the gift of forgiveness?
On November 9th the auditorium of the Pasco Hernando Community College auditorium was packed to hear a special speaker brought in for Peace Week. Eva Moses Kor, a Holocaust survivor, told in vivid detail about being a ‘guinea pig’ for the horrible experiments of Nazi doctor Josef Mengele at Auschwitz. Mengele was doing experiments on twins, and ten-year-old Eva and her twin sister Miriam were sent there after being taken from their home in Hungary. Daily they were humiliated and poked, measured and compared, given mysterious injections, and subjected to many other tests. Out of 1,500 sets of twins in the camp, only 200 survived. Eva and Miriam were one set that did. Summarizing her experiences, Eva told of three life lessons that she learned: (1) Never give up no matter what; (2) Respect everyone; and (3) Everyone has the power to forgive. You can use it as you wish. Eva said of the last one, “A person who has forgiven is a liberated person.” “I would like to talk to God and tell Him to add an 11th commandment: Forgive your worst enemy,” she added.
All of us need forgiveness. That’s why we need a Savior. More than that, we need the forgiveness of the people in our lives whom we have hurt. Eva Kor astonishes us with her ability to forgive those who did such horrible things to her as a child. Yet even those we love offend us and hurt us, sometimes on purpose, but mostly unintentionally. They need our forgiveness and we need to forgive them. We need consciously to take away our feelings of resentment for those who hurt us and knock down that barrier that keeps us from feeling as close to them as once we did. We need to forgive our children, our parents, our spouses and partners, our siblings and cousins, our friends and neighbors, our employers and workers, our doctors and pastors, our teachers and students, and even strangers…even our worst enemies. This Christmas, why not give the gift of forgiveness. It never goes out of style, and you don’t have to fight the crowds at the mall to get it. And in the giving of the gift, you will find yourself released, liberated, freed from the burden of resentment and anger. Yes, forgiveness is a great present. I’m putting it on my own Christmas wish list. I hope to get it, and I hope you get it, too.
With affection,
Pastor Carlan