Earlier this year, I hurt someone I love very deeply. The wound I caused was unintentional, but it came from a selfish place in my life. As innocent as I felt that my actions were, the effect they had was devastating, and I am responsible for those actions. For the better part of a year, I have done all I know to do to repent and repair the relationship, but my exhaustive efforts have all been rejected. The person I hurt had been hurt many times before by others in a similar fashion and was raw and vulnerable to be immensely wounded by my new contribution to his/her long-standing ache. I have worried and wept and grieved over the gulch I helped create.
I have been greatly humbled and isolated by my sin, and have sought counsel and God’s direction about what to do now. The freeze in this relationship has not changed, but so much else has. God has been doing quite a number on my heart. When someone refuses to forgive you, you experience a major slap of rejection. Everything you have to offer (love, friendship, your gifts and talents, etc.) isn’t enough, acceptable or attractive. You feel like you are an expendable nothing and you begin to build your own sense of pride and resentment.
Our God, who never rests and is always working, has been teaching me forgiveness and patience and trust and how to love someone who doesn’t love you back.
I have been really comforted by looking at some close and stressed-out relationships in Genesis. Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau, and Joseph and his brothers were all designed to be very close, family relationships, but in each case, one brother sinned against another and there was a devastating wound that led to decades of isolation and rejection.
Ishmael and His mother left the toxicity in their home with Abraham, Sarah and Isaac to live in the wilderness where Ishmael grew up to become an expert with the bow, marry an Egyptian and start a new nation. During this time Isaac married Rebekah and fathered two boys, as He became a patriarch of a new nation. Their separation was harsh, but we know they reconciled even if only briefly to bury their father, Abraham. (Gen 25:9)
Jacob and Esau’s relationship came to a boiling point when Jacob deceived his father over a birthright blessing and Esau threatened to kill him. Jacob fled and during His time of separation, married Leah and Rachel, had lots of children and became a successful farmer and shepherd. After a 20-year separation, Jacob travels toward home where He will have to encounter Esau. Esau
“ran to meet him, embraced him, fell on his neck and kissed him and they wept.” (Gen 33:4- NIV)
Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery and assumed He was dead. In the 20 years they were apart, the brothers continued to farm and grow their families, while Joseph rose in leadership until he was the 2nd most powerful man in the world. At their face-to-face reunion,
Joseph “kissed all his brothers and wept upon them.” (Gen 45:15 NIV).
In each of these relationships, one brother sinned against another, but in the end, there was reconciliation. If you, like me, have wounded someone you love, make sure you have done all you possibly can to repair, repent, forgive and reconcile, but if you are rejected, take comfort. You are learning patience, and patience produces character and character produces hope (Romans 5:4). God is all about reconciliation. He has reconciled us all to himself through Jesus Christ. He loves you and He knows what He is doing. His thoughts are not your thoughts and His ways are higher than your ways. (Is 55:8-9)
As for today, keep busy doing kingdom work. Trust and Obey. God’s timing is perfect. Waiting for reconciliation can be exhausting, but reconciliation is a great thing and the hope for it comes from our great God.
”But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day. 9The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you…” 2 Peter 3:8-9 (NKJV)