Dear Friends:

We two have paddled in the stream,

from morning sun till dine;

But seas between us broad have roared

since auld lang syne.

– Robert Burns, 1788

A lot of us will make resolutions this New Year’s weekend. Behavioral scientists who study these things say that 85% of those resolutions will not lead to permanent change.

Why don’t we change that outcome this year by making a resolution with truly transformative power. We can resolve to forgive.

Some years ago, on the afternoon of New Year’s eve, I gathered with some colleagues at their office to watch the DVD of a movie that we were interested in discussing. We discovered that someone had stolen the office’s DVD player over the holidays. We had no computer available satisfactory to the task. It seemed that our gathering was for naught.

A couple of nights before, I had outlined a study of Jesus’ great parable of forgiveness found in Matthew 18:23-35 and Paul’s insightful advice to two women in conflict found in Philippians 4:1-7.

My outline was handwritten on a couple of sheets from a legal pad. I pulled it out and said, “Here’s something we could talk about.”

Copies were made and we worked through the Scriptures for a couple of hours. The points we covered can be summed up as follows: Read more »