Thoughts for the Day

When the other servants saw what had happened, they were outraged    Matthew 18:31

The world abounds with stories of ‘one of those days’ that change people for life.  It could be a trauma that scars, it could be an act of kindness that rescues, it could be falling in love.   Jesus uses such an incident in this parable to describe what the Kingdom of Heaven is like.

A servant has amassed a debt so enormous as to beggar belief, equivalent to 20 years’ wages for 10,000 workers.  Imagine the pressure of living with that, knowing the day of reckoning is approaching.  When it arrives, he begs pointlessly to restructure this impossible debt, but the consequences are unavoidable.  Not only his possessions, but he and his whole family must all be sold.  Then, wonder of wonders, his master cancels the debt.

It should have been ‘one of those days’.  How could it not be ‘one of those days’?  Whatever sort of man he had been before, how could such undeserved, unexpected kindness not affect him?  But, extraordinarily, it doesn’t.  He has himself lent a far lesser sum to a debtor who also cannot pay, and he demands his rights, deaf to the debtor’s pleas.  Everybody has heard about both incidents, and everybody is outraged.  The outcome is that things work out very badly for this unmerciful servant.

Jesus sums it up, “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”  Let’s not get diverted worrying how we’re measuring up or how to reconcile it with our ‘faith alone’ doctrine.  Instead, let’s just allow the parable to speak to us.  If there were an audience able to compare, they would be outraged if we didn’t forgive others given the scale of what has been forgiven us.  Perhaps the solution for us is to appreciate God’s forgiveness more and to recognise we’ve had ‘one of those days’!