Redemption and reconciliation....

During Yom Kippur, people of the Jewish faith are supposed to contemplate whom they have wronged in their lives, then go to that person to ask for forgiveness.  There is a desire for reconciliation in the heart, and an actual action to make whole a relationship which has been put asunder.  It is a worthy goal, and one which we could all follow, especially in these days of easy social media estrangement and general hypersensitivity.

I have been thinking about this idea during the current Lenten season as I have pondered the difference between redemption and reconciliation.  On the surface, they seem very similar.  But as I consider them, although superficially the same, I have decided they are very different.

Words...

"Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never hurt me."

A silly child's rhyme, but so very wrong.  Time and again, we see how words do dig their way deep into a person's psyche, doing damage as they become entrenched in the mind.  Physical injuries heal, but the mental and emotional distress caused by thoughtless, or worse yet, intentionally hurtful words lasts forever.

I learned this painful lesson very young, at my father's funeral.  One of the hardest days of my life, from which my mind has mercifully blocked most of the details, yet I remember as vividly as if it were yesterday some of the most careless words people have ever uttered to me.  It changed my relationship with those people for all time.  I was never able to see them the same way again, because of the additional pain they thoughtlessly inflicted on me.  It wasn't intentional - I realize that now, as an adult, although I didn't then.  They simply didn't know what to say, and they cast around for something, instead of simply remaining quiet and giving me a hug or telling me they cared.  Instead of comfort, they had to fill the quiet space, thereby inflicting further injury, and those words, much as I wish I could remove them from my head, will not go away.  Words hurt.  And the damage is forever.

On Humility....

Martin Luther said,

"Humility is the decision to let God be God.”

In this statement, Luther was touching on the very nature of human existence.  Humility is fragile, tenuous, constantly struggling against the pridefulness that comes the moment we recognize our own insignificance.  Pride and humility walk hand in hand, opposite yet inextricably interwoven, separate but together.

In his famous treatise, “The Screwtape Letters,” C.S. Lewis writes of humility as self-forgetfulness.  Rest in that powerful message for a moment.  What does that mean?