Reconciliation Day

Flowers that bloom at Easter include my favorite, daffodils,
whose trumpet shape reminds me of the verse, "The
trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised" (1 Cor. 15:52).

Everybody knows about April Fool’s Day. But special interest groups have made April the month to make people aware of poetry, autism, math, humor, gardens, guitars (my son will like that!), frogs, the military child, and financial literacy. April 13 is Scrabble day, April 16, Richter scale day; and April 30, the birthday of Eeyore (of Winnie the Pooh fame). Those are all just a sampling. You could celebrate one or two “somethings” all month long.

But one “special day” marks emotional pain. April 2, “Reconciliation Day,” cuts to the core of our spiritual values and compassion. A nationally syndicated advice columnist started it about 25 years ago to encourage her readers to write a letter or call someone to mend a strained or broken relationship. Yet her “advice” is thousands of years old. Jesus said: “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors” (Matthew 6:12 KJV, emphasis added). Or, as put in plainer language: “Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us” (NLT).

We want to have our sins forgiven. But to reach out to those who have hurt us—and don’t seem to care—that’s another matter revealing how seriously we take our faith. My pastor recently finished a powerful sermon series on the life of Joseph, with the last two messages focusing on Joseph’s forgiveness of his spiteful, reckless brothers. The sermons took me back to when applying Joseph’s story to my own life helped me forgive those who’d hurt me, and to seek forgiveness from those I’d wounded. Such actions are messy, humbling, but necessary if we’re to wear the label of “Christian.”

Wanting to study Joseph more, I checked out of our church library a study by Charles Swindoll, whose church in Fullerton., Calif., I attended in the mid-1970s. Swindoll said this of Joseph’s amazing forgiveness of the brothers who sold him into slavery, recounted in Genesis 45:

Attitude is so crucial in the life of the Christian.  We can go through the Sunday motions, we can carry out the religious exercises, we can pack a Bible under our arms, and sing the songs from memory, yet we can still hold grudges against the people who have wronged us.  In our own way—and it may even be with a little religious manipulation—we’ll get back at them.  But that is not God’s way. (Joseph: A Man of Integrity and Forgiveness, Word, 1998, p. 147)

There’s no guarantee that “forgiveness” will turn things around and result in a warm and loving relationship. We live in a world of sinners, which includes each of us. But those of us who know a Savior, who reconciled us to Himself through the agony of a Good Friday cross, know we’ve been forgiven much ourselves. We cannot fully comprehend the depth of love and divine patience bound up in this, the amazing statement of Easter’s reconciliation:

But God demonstrates his own life for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8 NIV)

How will you celebrate Reconciliation Day?