Consider this story:
A woman went out to plant a maple tree. She took a lovely clay pot and poured a huge box of baking soda into it. She then selected a nice straight maple tree, spread out its roots and firmly planted it in the pot of soda. She took a watering can full of vinegar and poured it over the tree and set it bubbling away on the sunny windowsill hoping it would eventually grow to be a wonderful addition to her yard. A day or so later, she noticed that the tree was sitting in white sludge in the pot, she added more baking soda to refill the pot and added more vinegar to water it. She again set it bubbling away on the window sill. When she returned the next day, the tree was withered and dry. She poured more vinegar but nothing helped and the tree died. She took the tree to the trash and as she tipped it out of its pot, it slimed out with the white sludge oozing into the can.
In our lives we are bombarded daily, sometimes moment by moment by other people all wanting their way. Simply put, all of us are selfish in some way or another. What happens when we are on the receiving end of other people's desires for control? What happens to us when we are hurt, or angered by someone's lack of respect, sensitivity, or power hungry efforts? These things can happen in small incidents throughout our day, sifting like fine grains of baking soda into our pot (life). We may take the slights, the insults, and the inflicted anger and often hold our reactions in, but underneath the surface we may be resenting the individual for the hurt they caused. We grip onto that resentment and often go home thinking on it and mulling it over in our mind. Reminding ourselves how thoughtless that person was or we think about how embarrassed we felt in front of others or how wrong it was that they got a promotion over us or how wrong it was that they took out their personal frustrations on us and the list can go on and on. Sometimes we even ponder ways to get even with them, to get back at them, to make them feel like we did when they hurt us. We may ignore them when they walk past in the hallway, or not return their phone calls, or talk negatively about them to others behind their back.
There are other days when we may be hanging out and someone really ticks us off. They will say something that just finally sends us over the edge. We’ve taken their insults over and over again and have had enough. Or perhaps taken stuff from a lot of other folks and this is the final straw and we go off. Like heaping a pile of baking soda into the pot and pouring an entire bottle of vinegar over it, we explode in anger lashing out at them. When we do this we likely ruin our relationship with this person, and damage our relationship with all who witnessed the episode.
Some folks may be angry about broken relationships with others. Spouses who left for someone new, someone you're dating dumped you for someone else, a sibling or parent or child or friend left in anger moving away and never calls anymore. Your heart is broken by the loss and you sit and rehash all the events wondering if you did something different, or said something else, would it have turned out differently. You think about all the unfeeling, hurtful comments the person made and fester, bubbling away.
Other people are bubbling from the pain of loss in their lives. Someone or perhaps they themself is in ill health and may die. A child has a disability or they got laid off from their job or they can't have a child. Loss comes in many different packages, but most of you have seen it in some form or another. We grieve the loss and ache inside wanting things to be different, but if we aren't careful we can focus so much on the loss that we bubble and fester and can't let go of it and we wither and die ourselves from the lack of ability to move forward. Sometimes too we are wandering in this loss and others try to help us through and we get angry at their remarks, or attempts to help us move forward and we begin to fester even more, adding anger on top of our grief. We feel that life is unfair, that is isn' t right that these things happened to us and the sludge of bitterness begins to take hold sucking us down in the muck until we wither.
Unforgiveness is like a volcano inside of us. Often it will start out small with little incidents that filter in that we just accept and try hard to ignore, but they build until our relationship with a person is like a boiling cauldron of lava wanting to overflow. We smile and continue on but all the time are reminded of past incidents as new ones occur. Eventually we find ourselves surrounded by lots of people that have all slighted us in some way or another and we can't escape them. We get tired of being the one on the receiving end of their self importance and want to dish some out of our own for a change.
Notice there is no water. When unforgiveness and bitterness, take hold of us, we tend to shut down and shut out God. We don't turn to His Word. We ignore the fresh Living Water that will refresh our spirit and help us to let go and instead we opt to steep ourselves in the bitter vinegar of reviewing it all and rehearsing our responses. There is a popular phrase that says "revenge is sweet” but is it really? If left to fester, anger, resentment and revenge will blow up into a huge sliming mess that will ooze out affecting everyone around us but also will leave us in a mess of salty sludge causing us to wither and die bearing no fruit. In Romans 12: 19 Paul exhorts us “Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, "Vengeance is Mine, I will repay," says the Lord. "But if your enemy is hungry, feed him, and if he is thirsty, give him a drink; for in so doing you will heap burning coals on his head." It is hard, so hard, to be kind and show grace to someone who has wronged you.
All that stuff gets between you and that person, but it also gets between you and God. Bitterness will take root inside your heart. You will get angry that no one helped you fix the problem, that God didn't answer your prayers to restore the relationship and bitterness builds up. In Ephesians 4:31 - 32 Paul writes "Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you." Consider how many times "and" appears in these verses. There is quite a list of things that God wants us to put away. Holding on to all these things hardens our hearts, like a lava flow snaking across a plain, cooling but hardening over time. Notice the order of the words, after one puts away all these things he says" be kind", followed by "tender-hearted" followed by" forgiving". It is a progression of our taking action, followed by the heart changing which enables the kindness, tenderness and forgiveness to occur. But I also think the word "just" is vital here, the remembrance of what God has done in your own life. You cannot do any of this until you look to Him and remember what He has done in love and grace for you, let go of any bitterness and anger towards Him, reaching to Him, trusting He cares for you, and then He will enable you to forgive others.
So then a choice remains, will you trust the Master Gardener loves you and forgives you? Will you allow Him to uproot you from this sludge of unforgiveness and bitterness and put it way from you making the move of allowing Him to take you into His hand and let Him plant you firmly in the soil of a relationship with Him through His Son Jesus Christ? Or will you let yourself harden in the lava flow forever entombed, withered and dead from the heat of anger and pain in your life?
Lava: a melted rock that solidifies as it hardens
Love: a melted heart that solidifies relationships with God and others
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