115 Sermon Illustrations on Reconciliation

There were two brothers who had a quarrel and thereafter refused to speak to each other. The mother did all she could to reconcile them but to no avail. It greatly distressed her and robbed her of peace and happiness. One of the brothers saw how badly his mother felt. Hoping to please her, he brought her a fine gift. She refused it. "I don't want any gift," she said, "until you have become reconciled to your brother."

Edmund, surnamed Ironside, and Canute, the first Danish king, after long strife for the possession of England, made peace by agreeing to divide it between them, and confirmed it by putting on each other's apparel and arms, as if they had transferred their persons to each other, — Canute becoming Edmund; and Edmund, Canute. "Such an exchange," says Buck, "is there between Christ and the pardoned sinner. Christ puts upon the Church his own comeliness; decks her with his own jewels, as Isaac did Rebecca."

Themistoeles having offended King Philip, and not knowing how to regain his favor, took young Alexander, his son, in his arms, and so presented himself before the king; and, when he saw the young child smile upon him, his wrath was soon appeased towards him. The sinner should approach God with his Son Jesus Christ in his arms.

Certainly a soul, sensible what the loss of communion with God is, counts it hath not all its errand done when it hath naked peace given it. Should God say, "Soul, I am friends with thee, I have ordered thou shalt never go to hell, here is a discharge under my hand that thou shalt never be arrested for any debt more; but as for any fellowship with me, or fruition of me, thou canst expect none; I have done with thee, forever being acquainted more with thee,"—certainly the soul would take little joy in her peace. Were the fire out as to positive torments, yet a hell would be left in the dismal darkness which the soul would sit under for want of God's presence. A naughty heart seeks reconciliation without any longing after fellowship with God. Like the traitor, if the king will but pardon and save him from the gallows, he is ready to promise him never to trouble him at court: 'tis his own life, not the king's favor, he desires. Gurnall.

In an early period of the ministry of the Rev. John Wesley, he visited Epworth, in Lincolnshire, where his father had formerly been minister, but found the people greatly opposed to what they considered his new notions. He tells us, in his journal, that many persons were convinced of the importance of the truths he delivered from the tombstone of his father, some of whom were conveyed in a wagon to a neighboring justice of the peace, to answer for the heresy with which they were charged. Mr. Wesley rode over also: when the magistrate asked what these persons had done, there was a deep silence; for that was a point their conductors had forgotten. At length, one of them said, "Why, they pretend to be better than other people; and, besides, they pray from morning to night." He asked, "But have they done any thing besides?" "Yes, sir," said an old man, "An't please your worship, they have converted my wife. Till she went among them, she had such a tongue: and now she is as quiet as a lamb." "Carry them back, carry them back," replied the justice, "and let them convert all the scolds in the town."

During the last days of the Civil War, when many men were deserting the Southern flag, Secretary Stanton sent out a notice from the war department that no more refugees should be taken into the Union army.

A Southern soldier who had not seen that order came into the Union lines, and they read it to him. He didn’t know what to do. If he went back into the Southern army he would be shot as a deserter, and the Northern army wouldn’t have him. So he went into the woods, and stayed there, living on roots and whatever else he could get, until finally he was starving.

One day he saw an officer riding by. He rushed out of the woods, caught the horse’s bridle, and said he would kill the officer if he didn’t help him. The officer asked what was the trouble, and he told him.

“But haven’t you heard the news?” said the officer. “No; what news?”

“Why, the war is over! Lee has surrendered, and peace has been declared. Go to the nearest town and get all the food you want.”

The man waved his hat, and went off as fast as he could.

I want to say that peace has been declared between God and man. Be reconciled to God. The blood is on the mercy-seat, and the vilest sinner can be saved for time and eternity.

“A church educator could well be called on to spend 30 percent or more of his/her time and energy in conflict resolution,” said William Treadwell, a popular authority on church conflict.

Treadwell, along with Larry McSwain, president of Shorter College, Rome, Ga., discussed recognizing potential conflict and dealing with it creatively. Treadwell is minister of education at First Baptist Church, Waco, Texas, and adjunct professor at Baylor University’s Truett Theological Seminary. McSwain and Treadwell are often called on to help churches and ministers find ways to turn conflict situations into constructive learning experiences.

Treadwell reminded the educators they are expected to be agents of change. “But change often causes conflict,” he warned. “While not seeking it, the educator’s task is to engage conflict in such a way that the ‘players’ can integrate convictions and feelings on a higher plane and move forward together. When conflict becomes a win/lose contest, negotiation is called for as an engagement procedure.”

However, Treadwell observed, it is virtually impossible to negotiate a theological issue. “Then,” he said, “it becomes a question of how much diversity a church can handle.”

According to Jeter Basden of Baylor University, outgoing SBREA president who helped plan this year’s program, conference leaders were “on target” as they addressed the theme “Turning Defeat into Victory in Congregational and Personal Conflict.”

Basden, associate professor of ministry guidance at Baylor, used the Alamo, a short distance from the group’s meeting place, as a metaphor for how seeming defeat produced by conflict can be a rallying point for ultimate victory. The conference leaders to whom Basden referred included Chuck Kelly, president of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, McSwain and Treadwell and Howard Hendricks, distinguished professor at Dallas Theological Seminary and chair of its Center for Christian Leadership.

According to Basden, “The goal was to help ministers deal with conflict created by the diversity of generations in their congregations, the collision of personal expectations with those of constituents and ministers’ internal struggles as they follow their calling.”

In that vein, Hendricks reminded participants “the goal of ministry is not to have a pain-free, stress-free life, but to do what God called you to do in HIS strength.”

In the process of zealously pursuing that calling, however, Hendricks said ministers often go beyond their personal limits, thus producing “burnout.” He went on to list several characteristics of burnout based on 1 Kings 20 (withdrawal, depression and despair, physical/emotional exhaustion, bitterness and self-pity and a feeling of indispensability), along with some practical means of dealing with the condition.

Among the latter were three important things that create “margin” (defined as the gap between rest and exhaustion): a healthy devotional life, time with family and exercise. “Marginless ministry is the disease of the ‘90s,” Hendricks said.

Reflecting on the 1997 meeting in San Antonio, one SBREA member, Ron Palmer of South Carolina, observed, “It is clear that effectiveness in ministry for the years ahead will be determined by our ability to discern our strengths and build on them, rather than focusing on trying to turn weaknesses into strengths. Our present situation has taught us that when you spend energy on weaknesses, you neglect what is already strong, and that makes everything just average.”

_________________

Harton is church ministries group leader, Virginia Baptist Resource Center

Cecil Osborne, an American Baptist pastor, talks about dealing with problem people in churches. Sometimes the best approach is surgery - kick them out. One woman told the pastor's wife she was in love with him; did he reciprocate, the wife asked? "Yes, I can tell he does because of the way he looks at me from the pulpit." He went to her with his associate and suggested she become an Episcopalian. Sometimes he is tough, sometimes gentle.

Story of Simon Wiesenthal, who had 89 relatives murdered by Nazis. A dying German S.S. soldier confessed to him for 2 hours and asked for his forgiveness. "Weisenthal stood in silence for some time, staring at the man's bandaged face. At last he made up his mind and left the room, without saying a word. He left the soldier in torment, unforgiven."

Comments by others (in his book) have most of them saying he did not have to forgive. Only those who are wronged can forgive. The Bible teaches that forgiveness defies human reason; it is an unreasonable gift.

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[full text in May 18, 1986 sermon:]

Simon Wiesenthal is the greatest Nazi hunter of all time.

When President Reagan visited a German military cemetery in Bitburg, it was Wiesenthal who raised a protest. Because of Wiesenthal, an 80-year-old autoworker in Cleveland was accused of being a Nazi death camp guard. It was Wiesenthal who uncovered the Nazi past of the former United Nations leader, Kurt Waldheim.

Wiesenthal tracks down Nazis because he lost 89 relatives in Hitler's concentration camps. He is often asked when he will give up. After all, he is hunting down men in their 70's and 80's for crimes committed half a century ago.

Wiesenthal answered by writing a book. The book begins with a true experience he had while he himself was a concentration camp prisoner. One day he was yanked out of a work detail and taken up a back stairway to a dark hospital room. A nurse led him into the room, then left him alone with a figure wrapped in white, lying on a bed. The figure was a badly wounded German soldier, whose entire face was covered with bandages.

With a trembling voice, the German made a kind of confession to Wiesenthal. He told how he had been brought up in a Nazi family, the fighting he had experienced on the Russian front, and the brutal measures his S.S. unit had taken against Jews. And then he told of a terrible atrocity. All the Jews in a town were herded into a wooden building that was then set on fire. Burning bodies fell from the second floor, and the S.S. soldiers - himself included - shot them as they fell.

Several times Wiesenthal tried to leave the room, but each time the ghost-like figure would reach out and beg him to stay. Finally, after 2 hours, the soldier told Wiesenthal why he had been summoned. The soldier had asked a nurse if any Jews still existed. If so, he wanted one brought to his room so he could clear his conscience.

He then said to Wiesenthal - "I know that what I am asking is almost too much for you. But without your answer I cannot die in peace." He asked for forgiveness for all the Jews he had killed. He asked for forgiveness, from a man who might soon die at the hands of this soldier's comrades.

Wiesenthal sat in silence for some time. He stared at the man's bandaged face. At last he stood up and left the room without saying a word. He left the soldier in torment, unforgiven.

Half of Wiesenthal's book tells this true story. The other half contains responses by 32 experts - rabbis, Christian theologians, and secular philosophers. The vast majority concluded Wiesenthal was right to leave the soldier unforgiven. Only 6 thought he had done wrong.

Many of the other questioned the whole idea of forgiveness. They thought it was wrong to let criminals off the hook. Some said only those who are actually hurt can forgive. They couldn't see what right Wiesenthal could have to grant forgiveness on behalf of others.

It is difficult to condemn a man who lost 89 loved ones. But the Bible says we have the privilege of granting forgiveness on behalf of others. Forgiveness and reconciliation defy human reason. The righteousness of God is an unreasonable gift, something we'll never deserve. As ambassadors of Christ we can proclaim forgiveness to others, and we can bring people back together.

[see HolwickID #3036 and #17244]

When Dwight Lyman Moody died on December 22, 1899, Reuben Archer Torrey was Superintendent of the Moody Bible Institute and pastor of the Chicago Avenue Church (now Moody Church), both founded under the leadership and direction of the dynamic Moody. Thomas DeWitt Talmage, the fiery pulpiteer and author/editor, had just retired from his pastorate of the First Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C.

Unknown to most people, the two men - both with dominant, unbending personal- ities - had experienced a falling out some time previously. When Talmage learned of Moody's death, and knowing that his mantle would fall on Torrey, he immediately sat down and penned the latter a note. In it, he expressed regret for being such a poor Christian as to allow their differences to separate them for years, confessed his own fault in the matter, and begged Torrey's forgiveness. No one else, apparently, knew about it.

Years later, when J. Vernon McGee was pastor of the Church of the Open Door in Los Angeles, where Torrey had gone after leaving the work in Chicago, he found Talmage's letter in an old file and reported it on his nationwide radio program, "Thru the Bible." We assume Torrey accepted the apology and made one of his own, so both got it taken care of prior to the Bema Seat. At least Talmage, we know, got his part settled here rather than there.

Perhaps there is something in your life that needs attention immediately, judging yourself so you won't be judged.

In a class I teach for adults, I gave the assignment to "go to someone you love, and tell them that you love them."

At the beginning of the next class, one of the students began by saying, "I was angry with you last week when you gave us this assignment. I didn't feel I had anyone to say those words to. But as I began driving home my conscience started talking. Then I knew exactly who I needed to say `I love you' to. Five years ago, my father and I had a vicious disagreement and never really resolved it. We avoided seeing each other unless we absolutely had to at family gatherings. We hardly spoke. So by the time I got home, I had convinced myself I was going to tell my father I loved him.

"Just making that decision seemed to lift a heavy load off my chest.

"At 5:30, I was at my parents' house ringing the doorbell, praying that Dad would answer the door. I was afraid if Mom answered, I would chicken out and tell her instead. But as luck would have it, Dad did answer the door.

"I didn't waste any time - I took one step in the door and said, `Dad, I just came over to tell you that I love you.'

"It was as if a transformation came over my dad. Before my eyes his face softened, the wrinkles seemed to disappear and he began to cry. He reached out and hugged me and said, `I love you too, son, but I've never been able to say it.'

"But that's not even my point. Two days after that visit, my dad had a heart attack and is in the hospital. I don't even know if he'll make it.

"So my message to all of you is this: Don't wait to do the things you know need to be done. What if I had waited to tell my dad? Take the time to do what you need to do and do it now!"

=======================

By Dennis E. Mannering, from Condensed Chicken Soup for the Soul, Copyright

1996 by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor, Hansen & Patty Hansen

Forgiveness is a gift that can reconcile relationships.

I. True forgiveness not only cancels debt, it challenges to repent

and be reconciled.

A. There is much confusion about forgiveness.

B. God's command to forgive, turn other cheek, is costly.

II. What is forgiveness?

A. God's forgiveness is a passionate movement of strength and

mercy toward us, the offenders.

B. He cancels our debt, which provides an opportunity for:

1) Repentance.

2) Restoration of the broken relationship.

III. A forgiving heart knows how much it has been forgiven.

A. A forgiving heart reveals God's character. Luke 7:47

B. The kind of faith that allows forgiveness:

1) A true view of ourselves.

2) A true view of God.

IV. A forgiving heart yearns for reconciliation.

A. Reconciliation is costly for both sides.

1) The offended has to cancel the debt.

2) The offender has to repent.

a) Reconciliation is never one-sided.

B. Conditions for forgiveness?

1) Contradicts Jesus' other teachings.

2) We are to forgive, irrespective of other's response.

3) Restoration and peace, however, depend on their repentance.

a) Cheap forgiveness is not true forgiveness.

V. A forgiving heart works to destroy sin.

A. Offer food and drink to an enemy.

B. The enemy will always respond - one way or the other.

VI. Offer the gift of forgiveness.

A. Forgiveness involves deep questions.

B. Often, both see their sin, and renew the relationship.

Maggie McKinney was separated from her husband after 20 years of marriage, and then they got back together. She found that no one cheers when a "dead" marriage shows signs of life, and frequently got the same message: why revive a failed relationship?

Some friends promised, "You'll marry again soon - and next time your marriage will last." Others said, "You're better off single." Almost everyone encouraged her: "Go for it! You can do it!" Eighteen months later, when she and her husband decided to try their marriage again, the support was subdued, often nonexistent. Except for their friends among the religious right - and not even all of them - people only asked questions or expressed shock and disbelief. "I heard you two are back together," said one caller. "I hope to (heck) it isn't true." "When something is dead," a minister told her, "you need to bury it." The media also communicate the impossibility of reconciliation ("Mrs. Doubtfire" is a prime example).

She remembered her promise of "for better or worse" and "till death do us part." Although she can't precisely describe what happened, she felt a sense of completeness when she thought to trying again even though the marriage might blow up in her face. They had to readjust and still had arguments, and had to get used to less freedom. Yet overall the adjustment during the past six years has been much easier than she expected. Although things now look promising, neither of them has any guarantees that the breakup won't happen again. But had she married someone else, she wouldn't have been sure of that, either.

One plus is the sense of newness after a separation. When that excitement wears off - as it must in any relationship or experience - you have all the years of love and affection upon which to build. Shared holidays and vacations, car accidents, gifts, pictures taken and later laughed over, as well as grief over family deaths have all become part of an intricate structure.

Their separation taught them a little about what is and what isn't important. Forgiveness, they learned, is essential. And they have avoided (at least so far) the anger and bitterness that can come from divorce. They won't have to go to their children's graduations, weddings and other important occasions with an emotional cloud hanging over them. The children don't have to worry about dividing up holidays between Mom and Dad.

Their marriage is far from perfect. They are never sure that they'll not separate again. But the marriage is better than it was before the separation. They walk nearly every day, eat out more frequently, talk more. Both of them have learned to pay more attention to each other than they did in the past.

The minister wasn't wrong. At the time she talked to him the marriage WAS dead. But hasn't he heard about resurrection?

(McKinney teaches Spanish up to eighth grade in the western North Carolina mountains, where she lives with her husband.)

Lawmakers hope to make the road to divorce court more difficult.

Ten years ago, Mark and Betty Squier's 19-year marriage appeared to be finished. They endured in what they now call a "married singles lifestyle." Mark, a police officer, had become a self-described workaholic, holding down an additional two jobs, while Betty, a full-time homemaker, devoted herself to the couple's five children. They had become virtual strangers with separate lives. Mark began an extramarital affair with a woman he met through work, and in May 1986, he filed for divorce.

In Michigan, where the Squiers live, adultery is still a felony. But, Mark says, "I was able to file for divorce because of this adulterous relationship, and had I gone through with it, I would have received no prosecution from the government for my criminal conduct and no censure from my church or the state for breaking my vows to my wife." What's more, under Michigan's no-fault divorce laws, Mark could divorce Betty against her will and walk away with half the family's wealth.

Betty, who did not want the divorce, eventually persuaded Mark to attend a Retrouvaille marriage retreat with her. An international Catholic lay ministry, Retrouvaille targets troubled marriages. Through the Retrouvaille program, the Squiers found new hope for their marriage, and Mark withdrew his divorce action.

Today, the Squiers say their marriage is stronger and happier than ever. They have become volunteer leaders with Retrouvaille, helping other couples address marriage problems. They also have joined a growing public campaign in Michigan to reform the laws that would have made it so easy to break apart their family. "It's a matter of putting justice back into the courtroom of divorce," says Mark.

NO-FAULT DEFAULT: Nearly 30 years ago, social activists argued that the elimination of the fault-based divorce system would reduce acrimonious court proceedings and enhance the status of women. However, given mounting evidence of the negative impact of divorce on families, children, and society, a burgeoning -- and surprisingly diverse -- movement is now calling for radical re-examination of U.S. divorce policy. As at least nine states consider new legislation this spring, many Christian leaders are urging churches to consider their own role in addressing crumbling family structures.

At issue are policies and assumptions that have been in place for more than a generation. California became the first state to adopt the "no-fault" divorce concept, which is now the basis of divorce law in all 50 states. Under California's 1969 Family Law Act, a marriage could be dissolved if either partner cited "irreconcilable differences which have caused the irremediable breakdown of the marriage." Legislatures across the nation quickly adopted the idea.

Divorce rates have since skyrocketed. In 1960, about 393,000 marriages dissolved through divorce or annulment. That number has tripled to almost 1.2 million annually. There are many contributing factors, but a 1995 study by the University of Oklahoma concluded that no-fault divorce laws raised the divorce rate by more than 15 percent. The divorce rate has stabilized in recent years because marriage rates have decreased, with growing numbers of unmarried couples cohabiting.

COUNTING THE COST: Numerous studies document the societal tolls of such trends. Judith Wallerstein, who began ongoing studies of divorced families in 1971, has conducted some of the most definitive research. "Few adults anticipate accurately what lies ahead when they decide to divorce," Wallerstein wrote in her book "Second Chances." Years after divorce, Wallerstein found adults still experiencing severe anger, depression, and financial difficulties. Children of divorce suffered even more, she discovered, exhibiting health and emotional problems and a higher rate of antisocial behavior.

Other recent studies have documented greater risks of alcohol and drug abuse, depression, suicide, criminal behavior, and sexual activity among children growing up in single-parent homes.

"We as a society are simply failing to teach the next generation about the meaning, purposes, and responsibilities of marriage," says a 1995 report by the politically diverse Council on Families in America. "If this trend continues, it will constitute nothing less than an act of cultural suicide."

More and more social analysts believe the state has a responsibility to intervene. Former Clinton administration domestic policy adviser William Galston, now a professor at the University of Maryland, is calling for more legal distinctions in divorces involving minor children and in those that are not sought by mutual consent. Even in cases of mutual consent, Galston favors "braking mechanisms," such as a mandatory waiting period for "reflection, counseling, and mediation."

Galston considers such reforms a moral issue. "Norms of personal satisfaction are now trumping norms of relationships based on obligation," he says. "That is a shift that has some advantages for some adults, but it has many fewer advantages for many fewer children."

Harvard Law School professor Mary Ann Glendon, a frequent author on divorce, also advocates reforms giving top priority to consideration of children's needs, especially in dividing marital property. "Unlike the conflicting and competing principles on the rights of the spouses in current marital property law, this principle has the twin virtues that it is relatively noncontroversial and that it applies to the majority of cases," she writes in a recent law review article.

MICHIGAN MODEL: Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Washington all have begun putting legislative flesh on such ideas.

Michigan took the lead when, on Valentine's Day, State Rep. Jessie Dalman introduced a package to overhaul the state's marriage and divorce policies.

Dalman's proposals would eliminate unilateral no-fault divorce, except in instances where physical abuse, desertion, adultery, substance abuse, or imprisonment can be proved. In divorces involving children, parents would be required to receive counseling about the potential effects of divorce and submit a postdivorce parenting plan to the court. Dalman also proposes incentives for premarital counseling: a substantial reduction of the marriage license fee and waiting period for couples who have undergone counseling.

During the hearing process last year, Mark and Betty Squier testified in support of Dalman's proposed reforms. Also solidly behind the proposals is the Michigan Family Forum, a nonprofit group affiliated with the Colorado Springs-based Focus on the Family.

"It is simply wrong that the state would, in effect, be on the side of a person who is breaking up a marriage for no reason," says Dan Jarvis, director of research and public policy for the Michigan Family Forum. "That is just encouraging irresponsibility." Jarvis says his group has mailed copies of Michigan's bills to 30 states in response to requests.

Syndicated religion columnist Michael McManus, who has been calling for these policy reforms since the mid-1980s, says such national interest represents a marked shift from the beginning of the decade when little, if any, political support for repeal of no-fault divorce existed.

"It is clear that there is a rising tide of public concern about the rate of marital dissolution in this country, and in particular its effect on children," agrees Galston.

The issue appears to be a rare one transcending standard ideological divides.

"It would be a mistake to see this simply as social conservatives," asserts Galston, a self-described liberal. Even long-time feminist leader Betty Friedan recently acknowledged that no-fault divorce has created a host of "unanticipated consequences" for women and children that need to be reconsidered.

ARE LAWS THE ANSWER?

Nonetheless, many observers question whether the current legislative proposals are the correct solution. In Michigan, several women's groups have argued that Dalman's bills could trap wives into dangerous situations by requiring proof of abuse. Some sociologists have expressed concern that reforms making marriage and divorce more difficult may simply encourage people to live together outside of marriage, prompting even more consequences for the breakdown of marriage and the family.

Many divorce attorneys, including officials at the Michigan Bar Association's family law section, argue that repealing no-fault measures will result in an escalation of the bitterness and fabrication of charges already all too often present in divorce situations.

Supporters of divorce reform disagree with such criticisms. Jarvis acknowledges that Michigan's proposals may require "a slightly harder burden of proof" for abuse, but he added that abused spouses able to substantiate their claims will also receive in the long run "a greater portion of the marital assets and child custody." In addition, advocates of a fault-based system contend that no-fault laws never really eliminated acrimony within divorce, but merely shifted it to other issues such as child custody and property division.

SLEEPING CLERGY? As the debate ensues, some Christian leaders express regret that the church has not been a stronger voice on an issue that has such direct moral implications. "Religious leaders are mostly asleep on this," McManus says, although he acknowledges that the "Catholic church has been more awake than most."

In Michigan, the state Catholic Conference has endorsed Dalman's reform package. The Michigan Family Forum, which is a Christian group, has been trying to rally other religious support for the bills as well.

Nationally, Catholic bishops, in a 1991 "Putting Children and Families First" report, urged reconsideration of "the consequences of permissive divorce" and called generally for divorce laws that "recognize the frequently devastating consequences of divorce on children."

Politics aside, more and more Christians are lamenting the lack of attention among Protestant leaders to marriage and divorce. "There is no strategy among any Protestant denominations to try and save marriages," says McManus, whose book Marriage Savers encourages such efforts.

Many observers see growing ambivalence about divorce, partly fostered by the experiences of church leadership. According to a 1995 study by Hartford (Conn.) Seminary, one-quarter of female and one-fifth of male clergy have been divorced (CT, Oct, 23, 1995, p. 82).

Such trends have a direct impact on marriage ministry within churches, according to David Ferguson, executive director of the Center for Marriage and Family Intimacy in Austin, Texas. "You're not going to prioritize or emphasize ministry within your church any more than that truth is real in your own home," he says. "There is a lot of marital family pain in the ministry, and if that is not addressed, you're not going to have a healthy emphasis in the church."

In addition, Ferguson suggests that many pastors simply do not know how to address marriage and divorce issues. They are not trained in seminaries, so they relegate such ministry to other "professional" counselors, rather than dealing with it in the church, he asserts.

Craig Keener, author of "... And Marries Another," a book offering biblical interpretation on divorce and remarriage, welcomes new examination of church and social attitudes about divorce. He agrees churches need to place more emphasis on faithfulness and restoration of marriage. But he is also concerned that such efforts not create a backlash against hurting persons who have gone through divorce. "Within the church, on one hand, you have people who are so much against divorce that they take it out on divorced people, and on the other hand, you have people who don't mind divorce at all," he says. "Neither extreme is biblical."

The church needs to develop a "just divorce theory" similar to the criteria theologians have developed on war, suggests Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen, a professor of gender studies at Eastern College. "Divorce is not God's creational intention for people, but in a fallen world, we sometimes have to choose between the lesser of two evils," she says, adding that the "default option should obviously be toward the maintenance of marriage."

PREPARING THE CHURCH: Van Leeuwen applauds McManus's call to churches to do a better job of premarital counseling. "There's no point in getting moralistic and heavy-handed about divorce if we're not preparing young people better for marriage," she asserts.

Ferguson's center provides resource and training materials to equip churches for more ongoing marriage and family ministry. It also sponsors marriage retreats for ministry couples. Ferguson says new laws making divorce more difficult to obtain could help his work. "I think it would give pastors and church counselors more of an opportunity to encourage the couple to seek additional help, to explore every imaginable way of reconciling their marriage," he says.

The question many Christians are asking is whether churches are indeed ready to step in should new laws take effect.

Mark Squier says that when he first read Dalman's call for mandatory counseling before divorce, he saw a perfect niche for Retrouvaille, which in Michigan has an 80 percent success rate in reconciling troubled marriages. But, he says, he also became slightly alarmed. As a completely volunteer ministry, "we don't have the capacity right now" to handle large numbers of new applicants. About 400 couples attended the Retrouvaille program in Michigan last year, while 40,000 in the state divorced.

"Laws may be helpful in moving society in a better direction as far as making people think twice about divorce, but I think the church shouldn't have to wait for society to set the standards of morality," says Keener, professor of New Testament at Hood Theological Seminary in North Carolina.

McManus, who has been married for 30 years, urges churches to take more spiritual responsibility for the marriages blessed before their altars. He also is encouraging older, more experienced couples to be "marriage mentors."

In addition, 38 cities across the nation have adopted the "Community Marriage Policy" that McManus has advocated for more than a decade. Under the policies, clergy in local areas join forces in a unified commitment to "radically reduce the divorce rate." Ninety-five pastors in Modesto, California, signed the first community policy in 1986. A decade later, the number of annual divorces in the county has dropped to 1,606 from 1,923 -- while the population has risen to 420,000 from 303,000.

McManus believes that the church, "properly functioning," has the message that can strengthen marriages at every stage.

Based on their own experience, Mark and Betty Squier agree. "Forgiveness is never a part of society's message. Instead, we're told, 'You can be happier if you get rid of him,' " Betty says. But, she adds, the church has a different message: "If you are unable to forgive, then you will not be forgiven." And Mark and Betty say that message saved their marriage, even though the state would have readily dissolved it.

Copyright (c) 1996 Christianity Today, Inc./CHRISTIANITY TODAY Magazine

Volume 40, No. 4, page 84

Koinonia community struggles to overcome debts.

Koinonia Farm, a Christian commune started a half-century ago in rural southwest Georgia, has survived arson, bombings, and drive-by shootings in a stand against racial intolerance. Now a new foe is threatening the community: a $600,000 debt.

The 1,400-acre farm, five miles southeast of Jimmy Carter's hometown of Plains, is still a nonprofit ministry, but it is no longer a common-purse colony. Today the farm has 22 full-time and around three-dozen part-time employees.

Throughout the past 50 years, goals have remained the same: nonviolent, peaceful solutions to society's problems and empowerment of the poor, neglected, and oppressed.

The Koinonia community has had difficulty adapting to changing times, causing financial stress that led to ministry cutbacks. The youth ministry outreach program has been suspended, staff salaries have been frozen, and timber on the property is being sold to raise money. Koinonia also is trying to rejuvenate an ignored donor list.

"It's going to be a real challenge to make it," says Ted Swisher, a former executive director who lived at Koinonia from 1970 to 1983 and is now a board member. "It's important to get on a viable footing on an annual basis; then we can address the long-term debt."

"Finances are a grave concern," admits Lenny Jordan, chair of the eight-member board and 42-year-old son of founder Clarence Jordan. "As is the case with all nonprofits, giving is down."

Acting coordinator of activities Betty Jean Jones, an African American who has been at Koinonia for 13 years, is in charge while the ministry, with a $1.5 million annual budget, seeks a new executive director. Fer-Rell Malone was fired in September, Jones says, because of "an inability to manage according to Koinonia's guidelines." Many at Koinonia call Malone an excellent preacher. (He continued to pastor a church in Americus, eight miles away, during his two-year tenure.) Yet they acknowledge he did not possess the business acumen to stem the flow of red ink. Lenny Jordan says Koinonia needs a visionary leader.

"The crisis is mostly one of morale and leadership," says board member Don Mosley, Koinonia coordinator from 1974 to 1979.

A TUMULTUOUS HISTORY: Hard times are nothing new at Koinonia, which has faced struggles since Clarence Jordan began the integrated community among Georgia's red-clay cotton fields. In the late 1950s, a Koinonia roadside market was torched, buildings on the grounds were strafed by machine-gun fire, and the Ku Klux Klan paid a threatening visit.

In the early years, almost no merchant within a 30-mile radius would do business with Koinonia, and a bomb destroyed an Americus feed store that violated the boycott. As a means of economic survival, Jordan began a mail- order fruitcake and nut business.

Although the business succeeded, the tense climate deterred many prospective Koinonia residents. By 1968, the commune had only two families left.

Jordan was considered a deft theologian, translating portions of the Greek New Testament into the popular Cotton Patch Gospel, which creatively sets gospel narratives in rural Georgia culture. But he was not as gifted in administration and business management.

In 1968, Millard Fuller, a self-made Alabama millionaire lawyer who had given away his money to help the poor, brought a new vision for Koinonia Farms: partnering.

Fuller, now 60, devised a three-pronged approach to living out the gospel: farming, industry, and housing. While farming and industry remain staples at Koinonia, the housing concept has taken on a life of its own. Koinonia started its affordable-housing ministry by replacing ramshackle dwellings with new, modest homes, sold at cost. Koinonia holds the mortgage on the homes via long-term, interest-free loans that required a down payment of only $750.

In 1969, a year after Fuller's arrival, Jordan died at age 57 of a heart attack while working on his translation of the Gospel of John. He is buried in a pecan grove on the farm's grounds.

Jordan's lifelong quest for racial reconciliation was perennially unpopular. The deacons at the Baptist church Jordan attended in Americus consistently refused to allow him to bring African Americans to the service. After he tried to bring Asian Indians through the doors, the church banned him.

"Clarence was for reconciliation when reconciliation wasn't cool," says Timothy George, dean of Samford University's Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham. "He was a prophetic figure, not just for Baptists, but for all Christians, particularly in the South."

After Jordan's death, the housing program blossomed under Fuller's leadership. To date, Koinonia has built 60 homes on village property and another 140 in the surrounding area. Fuller left Koinonia to launch the successssful Habitat for Humanity, based in Americus, in 1976. Habitat has built a total of 35,000 houses in 44 countries.

TIME OF UNCERTAINTY: Koinonia's communal system seemed ill-suited for a changing American culture. In response, Koinonia made a philosophical leap by abolishing its "common purse" of pooled financial resources and in 1992 switched to paying salaries to its workers.

That reversal had some unanticipated consequences. "There's been a change in the kind of commitment people have," says Coffee Worth, a 75-year-old Koinonia worker for 19 years and a board member. "People want to have security, but salary is not what makes relationships," Worth says. "We can make it go if everybody doesn't quit."

Racism is one reason cited for dissolving the intentional community two years ago and replacing it with a corporation.

Although the ministry started as a beacon of racial equality, some at Koinonia believe a paternalistic attitude toward home ownership and jobs had been at work in recent years.

While whites tended to be in leadership before, Jones says authority now has been spread out.

"Now it is essentially a black-run operation," says board member Swisher, who joined Habitat for Humanity in 1983.

Rather than racism, Fuller believes, the problem involved a clash of values and cultures. "Koinonia has always been a bastion of interracial activity, but it hasn't been immune from the larger racist society in the Deep South," he says. "People who come from two different cultures create tension."

SELF-SUFFICIENCY: Today's seasonal support staff -- a mixture of retirees and young people -- come looking for concrete ways of expressing their Christian commitment.

Young interns receive free lodging in simply furnished dormitories and $120 a month for living and meal expenses. The well-stocked library is a popular place in the settlement, where cars and television sets are out of place. At lunchtime, staffers gather for a common meal, accompanied by Bible reading and prayer requests.

Most of the food is grown in organic gardens supervised by 34-year-old Bob Burns, who worked in Bangladesh for three years with the Mennonite Central Committee. Chickens are used to reduce the insect population, duck manure is used as fertilizer, and pecan shells eventually become compost.

Burns is contemplating marketing organic crops, but for now, much of Koinonia's income still comes from mail-order candy, nut, and fruitcake sales.

PRISON OUTREACH: While the days of boycotts are a distant memory, ill will toward the farm has been revived because of Koinonia's prison and jail project, started in June 1993.

"This is a bold ministry for Koinonia to take," says coordinator John Cole- Vodicka. "It has dredged up a lot of old animosity."

Recently, Cole-Vodicka filed a complaint against magistrate John Southwell. The magistrate meted out a 60-day prison term for a black student who used profanity in a public-school classroom. Cole-Vodicka has asked a Georgia judicial commission to investigate the magistrate's allegedly racist behavior and to remove him from office.

Through the outreach effort, Cole-Vodicka and volunteers visit county jails in a 40-mile radius, where he says there are 5,000 inmates -- 99 percent of them black -- in seven county jails and eight state prisons. "Race plays a major role in who gets locked up and for how long," he says. Cole-Vodicka, who has been banned from visiting two jails, says, "We're seen as rabble- rousers and troublemakers. It hasn't endeared us to a lot of folks."

Looking into the future, many Koinonia staffers are keeping their options open. Cole-Vodicka is searching for a foundation grant to support the prison ministry in the event that Koinonia folds.

Lenny Jordan, who lived at Koinonia the first 19 years of his life, is guardedly optimistic about the experiment founded by his father. "We've gone through periods when the financial outlook has been worse," Jordan says. "The financial side has to be faced, but if we keep a spiritual side, we can find a way to make it."

________

Copyright (c) 1995 CHRISTIANITY TODAY, Inc./CHRISTIANITY TODAY Magazine

The Spirit unites, but the American church divides. A field guide for discerning how to handle Christian controversy.

“For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly?” Paul wrote to the Corinthian church, and later commented: “The very fact that you have lawsuits among you means you have been completely defeated already. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated?” (1 Cor. 3:3 and 6:7; NIV).

“Worldly.” “Completely defeated.” Would the apostle Paul use similar words to describe the vital, innovative, quarreling church in America today?

I was startled recently when I went through the news columns of Christianity Today for 1996 and found over a dozen good-sized fights reported among American Christians. (No doubt hundreds of other fights were too local to make national news.) They included the full gamut of quarrels over property, doctrine, money, leadership. Even though I had read all these stories as they appeared, I had not taken in their cumulative effect. The frequency of our fighting left me numb.

Fighting among Christians is nothing new, of course; it dates from New Testament times. It’s hard to say whether we fight more than Christians in previous periods. I suspect more, but I can’t prove it. I do know that we fight differently.

CASE STUDY NO. 1: ACA

Let me tell you what I know about a very public fight in a well-known evangelical Christian organization, which I will leave unnamed since it could serve no purpose for me to re-publicize these wounds. Plus, the unfolding of the controversy is so frustratingly common that any of a large number of groups could be substituted for this one.

I stumbled into the beginning of this fight several years ago while researching an article. The founding figure of the organization — I’ll call it ACA, for A Christian Agency — had recently moved on. The board had turned over leadership to a new man from outside the organization.

I was not long in their building before I sensed a culture gap. The staff were a bookish group, deeply dedicated to thoughtful, measured approaches. The new leader was a hard-charging crusader, eager to put his distinctive stamp on the organization. Most of the staff members lived on a pittance. They had grown up in the organization and saw themselves akin to missionaries. The new leader was accustomed to living well, and he had no sense that because others had lived frugally he should do the same.

While I visited ACA, a strained cordiality reigned. Apparently that did not last long. Some staff left ACA voluntarily; a good number were “laid off.” After one particularly large group lost their jobs, they made their complaints public. One laid-off staff member sued ACA for wrongful dismissal. ACA filed a countersuit. This dispute was eventually settled out of court.

Meanwhile, other former staff members formed a committee to approach the ACA president and his board with their questions and concerns. They got nowhere. Their entreaties, they say, were answered with threatening letters from ACA’s lawyers. They got neither a face-to-face meeting nor answers to their complaints. When you listen to members of this group, it sounds as though they did everything they could to reach a meeting of minds but got stonewalled.

ACA leaders say they willingly met with individuals. But they saw the committee as a power tactic, intended not to facilitate communication but to force the board’s hand. ACA leaders were not willing to accord the committee the status it sought by granting a meeting. Nor did they feel obliged to answer every charge the committee raised.

To this day, both sides consider themselves essentially blameless. They have never met to try to resolve their differences, and they aren’t talking to each other yet. Both sides grow frustrated at the very mention of the other side’s names. It is a thoroughly nasty and unresolved quarrel.

AN OUT-OF-CHURCH EXPERIENCE

Much about the above fight is classic, especially the non-communication between staff and board. ACA’s case, though, represents several new trends in how we Christians fight.

First, it is more likely today for Christians to turn to litigation. Of course, Christians have been suing each other at least since the time of the Corinthian church, but I believe it would be accurate to say that lawsuits have been exceptional. Our grandparents would never have pondered their chances of being sued as they steered their way through church quarrels. Today, it is a rare battle that doesn’t have a lawyer involved.

Steve McFarland of the Christian Legal Society (CLS) says that Christians go to court thinking they are going to get justice. Instead, they get incredible delays, terrible costs, and in the end, a very doubtful chance at justice. In the case of ACA, the moment a suit was filed, lawyers were advising all parties not to talk to each other for fear of damaging their “case.” (Of course, this can be an excuse; after the suits were dropped, the parties still wouldn’t talk.) Lawyers’ tactics are rarely designed to bring reconciliation.

A second modern distinctive: the parties to the ACA fight were board members, staff members, lawyers. Church authorities–pastors and elders–did not play a significant role. No church or denominational structures intervened or provided a place to air differences.

Sociologist Tony Campolo notes that over half of American Christians now attend an independent church, detached from any intercongregational structure that has the power to encourage reconciliation. And in many congregations, independent or otherwise, church discipline is weak or nonexistent.

Nonetheless, even independent churches retain one tool for resolving conflict that was missing in the ACA example–namely, a real community. Parachurch organizations have grown dominant in missions and evangelism, in all forms of communication (print and broadcast), in service to the poor, in political and social advocacy, and even in defending doctrinal orthodoxy. The battles of parachurch organizations like the ACA are necessarily outside the discipline of any church body. They are governed ultimately by each organization’s constituents, who are often “constituents” only through the checks they write.

Many modern Christian fights carry on in this netherworld of independent direct-mail-funded organizations, where fundraising and communication with donors are the most pressing realities. (Modern American politics is carried on in a similar environment.) They provide no nexus for resolving conflict, and no community to press the partisans to make peace.

There can even be an incentive to quarrel. If you can make the case in your newsletter or on your radio show that you are fighting for principle (and who isn’t?), then your “community of donors” may actually give more. Fighting tends to shut down contributions in a local church, but it may increase giving to parachurch organizations that successfully spin the dispute into a matter of honor or a point of identity.

EMPOWERING PEACEMAKERS

“I plead with Euodia and I plead with Syntyche to agree with each other in the Lord. Yes, and I ask you, loyal yokefellow, help these women” (Phil. 4:2-3). Fighting Christians need help. They could make peace by themselves–nothing stops them. Frequently, however, they need the pressure and assistance of other believers.

Who will give it? American Christianity is increasingly fragmented. Quarreling Christians nowadays don’t meet accidentally, as people did in small towns or small denominations. The social structures that would make the other party difficult to avoid are not there.

This is not to suggest that people in small towns don’t fight. They do, of course. Euodia and Syntyche did in the first century. They needed someone to step in and help them. Paul took their quarrel on and enlisted someone in the Philippian church to take an active, hands-on, peacemaking role. What would that look like today? A peacemaker needs to have authority in both persons’ (or both organizations’) lives. In ruptured modern society, such a person may not exist. That’s why structures need to be reinvented. …

Nonetheless, we need umbrella groups that are willing to spell out right behavior and to provide an authority that insists that wrong be made right. No power on heaven or earth can force people to behave like Christians; you can’t coerce reconciliation. Structures can, however, provide peacemakers and moral pressure. The more they are used, the more their significance will grow. …

Another strategy for peacemaking is the use of mediation ministries. Even secular corporations increasingly rely on mediation and arbitration simply because it saves time and legal expenses. In nearly all states, a contract containing a “conciliation clause” stating that disputes must be resolved through mediation (voluntary agreement) and arbitration (a mandated settlement determined by an arbitrator after a formal hearing of evidence) will be enforced by the courts.

Christians have an added incentive for using mediation and arbitration: they can settle disputes in a Christian way. The CLS’s Steve McFarland recommends that every church and Christian organization include a conciliation clause in its terms of employment and other contracts. People fear, he says, that mediation will try to impose a kiss-and-make-up solution, bypassing the facts that require justice. In reality, he says, properly conducted mediation and arbitration seeks justice as well as peace. Mediators can and should be experienced and knowledgeable in the area of dispute. They gather facts and offer carefully constructed settlements.

Several national organizations offer trained, Christian mediation and arbitration services. Best known are Mennonite Conciliation Services, Peacemaker Ministries (a spinoff of the CLS), and the Alban Institute. Peacemaker’s Ken Sande says that most of their work is at a local level, helping to resolve family and business disputes. Occasionally Peacemaker is asked to help with “major Christian figures,” but Sande has often found them resistant to conciliation. “They have a hard time believing there are people competent to deal with their cases. When threatened, they tend to go quickly to an attorney. They’re usually more comfortable with an attorney.”

CASE STUDY NO. 2: ECT

Another very different kind of fight was prompted by the 40-page statement “Evangelicals and Catholics Together” (ECT), issued in March of 1994. ECT tried to define the basis for a working alliance between evangelical and Catholic Christians, particularly regarding social issues such as abortion and family life. Prison Fellowship’s Charles Colson and First Things editor Richard Neuhaus originated the idea and persuaded prominent Christians in both communities to sign. The statement soon encountered strong opposition on the evangelical side. [Mediation followed… ]

The morning’s talks were brutally frank and highly emotional. By the end of the day, however, these leaders had come together. There were tears and embraces as they signed a statement clarifying the theology of ECT. Colson called the meeting “a beautiful example of how Christians should deal with their differences.”

Several participants said that Stowell had done a masterful job of moderating. I asked Stowell what such a peacemaking meeting required. He mentioned several factors:

• First, he said, it is very important that all participants really want a constructive result. The goal may be simply to understand each other. But if participants aim only to vent their anger, to “get” or “reprove” the other party, reconciliation is unlikely.

• Second, he said, you need something drafted ahead of time if you hope to emerge with an agreement. Packer had brought a statement to Fort Lauderdale that served as a solid starting point. “If you have no predraft,” Stowell said, “then trying to write in a group like that is an excruciating thing. You’ll never get it done.”

• Third, Stowell noted, a neutral meeting place is important. While Kennedy’s church was not perfect (Kennedy’s sympathies were clear), it at least avoided the headquarters of one of the more outspoken battlers.

• Fourth, Stowell felt it was important not to rush into a solution. “You have to let people vent enough so that they actually get all the junk on the table. If guys have really been wounded, those wounds have got to show. It has to get personal enough so that guys really get honest about what they feel.”

________

Copyright(c) 1997 by the author or Christianity Today, Inc./Christianity Today magazine. October 6, 1997 Vol. 41, No. 11, Page 27

In 1913, the Federal government held a fiftieth anniversary reunion at Gettysburg. It lasted three days. Thousands of survivors bivouacked in the old battlefield, swapping stories, looking up comrades.

The climax of the gathering was a reenactment of Pickett's Charge. Thousands of spectators gathered to watch as the Union veterans took their positions on Cemetery Ridge, and waited as their old adversaries emerged from the woods on Seminary Ridge and started forward toward them across the long, flat fields. Philip Myers, [who witnessed the event as an 18 year old] wrote, "We could see not rifles and bayonets but canes and crutches. We soon could distinguish the more agile ones aiding those less able to maintain their places in the ranks."

As they neared the northern line, they broke into one final, defiant rebel yell. At the sound, "after half a century of silence, a moan, a sigh, a gigantic gasp of unbelief" rose from the Union men on cemetery Ridge. "It was then," wrote Myers, "that the Yankees, unable to restrain themselves longer, burst from behind the stone wall, and flung themselves upon their former enemies ... not in mortal combat, but re-united in brother love and affection."

Ken Burns, The Civil War, p.412,

(Conflict, Reconciliation)

Copyright(c) 1998 by the author or Christianity Today, Inc./Leadership Journal.

Fall 1998, Vol.XIX, No. 4, Page 67

*

Keep forgiveness flowing in small groups.

1. Go to the offender. Even seemingly trivial offenses can cause

resentment to build. Follow the command of Matt 18:15.

2. Send others to their offender.

3. Handle offenses outside the meeting time. Unless the matter concerns

everyone, it needs to be handled privately. If handled

properly, it usually only takes a minute to deal with an

offense.

4. Be quick to say you're sorry.

5. Stay humble. 1 Pet 3:9; Phil 2:3,5. Dealing with offenses promptly

and letting forgiveness flow keeps peace and harmony alive

in our small groups and pleases the Lord.

*

Craig has spent 14 years of a life sentence behind bars for murder. But if you ask him what was the hardest thing he's faced so far, it wasn't a prison riot or an attack by a fellow inmate.

What really hurt, Craig says, was sitting down face to face with the family of the man he murdered -- and hearing first-hand how his act of rage shattered their lives.

Craig met the family through a program designed to reconcile criminals and their victims. Programs like these are catching on across the United States, and often they do more than years in prison to change a criminal's outlook.

In the American criminal justice system, most criminals never talk with the person they have wronged. At best, they might catch a glimpse of each other across a crowded court room. The crime is prosecuted as an offense against the state, not against the victim.

But in this impersonal system, the offender rarely confronts the personal pain and trauma he has inflicted. That's where Victim-Offender Reconciliation programs can make all the difference. As Craig puts it, meeting with the victim's family "brought me to grips with my own culpability and personal feelings of guilt." And an awakened sense of personal responsibility is much tougher to deal with than any punishment meted out in a prison yard.

Reconciliation programs can benefit everyone involved in a crime. For victims, it gives a chance to express their deep pain and anger over the trauma they have suffered. For offenders, it gives a chance to face the consequences of their actions -- and to set things right again as much as possible. Often the meetings end with the criminal apologizing and offering to pay restitution.

Finally, reconciliation is good criminal justice policy. A scandal of our current system is the high number of criminals who return to prison -- again and again. Clearly, we need to look for programs that go beyond simply locking criminals up -- programs that change them from the inside. Reconciliation programs can be just such a life-changing experience.

A prison inmate named Julius says he used to feel real sorry for his crime. Sorry he got caught, that is. Then he attended a Victim-Offender Reconciliation meeting -- and for the first time, he said, he saw his victims as real people. As he put it, "I realized this could have been my mother, father, brother, sister." By the end of the meeting, Julius says, he felt "genuine remorse and empathy."

That remorse often translates into real reform. A 1992 study by the Minnesota Citizens Council on Crime and Justice found that juvenile offenders who participated in reconciliation programs were less likely to commit crimes after their release from prison.

Why don't you find out whether your local court system is using reconciliation programs. Biblical teachings on justice aim not only at punishment for crime but also at restoration of the community. Crime tears a jagged hole in the fabric of our social life, but reconciliation and forgiveness mend that hole.

They can help restore the civil peace that the Bible calls 'shalom.'

___________________________

Copyright (c) 1999 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

*

Saul listened to Jonathan. — 1 Samuel 19:6

The Timeless Classics selections in this issue of Campus Journal are from F. B. Meyer’s devotional classic Our Daily Homily. — DO

Jonathan might have withdrawn from his friendship with David when it threatened his relations with his father; but instead he stepped into the breach and pleaded for his friend, trying to erase the false and ungenerous conceptions of which Saul had become possessed.

It is an example we do well to study and copy. For his friend’s sake, as well as for his father’s, Jonathan was extremely eager to effect a reconciliation between him to whom he owed allegiance of son and subject, and this fair shepherd-minstrel-warrior who had so recently cast a sunny gleam upon his life.

Men often misconceive of one another. Jealousy and envy distort behavior and actions which are in themselves as beautiful as possible. Misrepresentation will blind us to the true excellences of one another’s characters. Wrong interpretations are often put on the most innocent incidents. We cannot help these things; they are part of the sad heritage of the Fall. But we may often take up the cause of a misunderstood man; and at the risk of losing our own reputation and diverting to ourselves some of the odium which attaches to him, we may stand as his defenders.

Even if we dislike another, as Saul did David, let us give scope to the good Spirit to plead his cause at the bar of our hearts, as Jonathan did for his friend. Let us consider all the kind and loving things that may be said of him; let us put ourselves in his position; let us be willing to believe and hope all things. Let us plead for others, since this is a work in which Christ’s followers most closely approximate to Him who ever lives to intercede. — FBM

REFLECTION

• How often do I let my dislike for someone lead me to say negative things about him that may not be true?

• Are my negative opinions of others more often based on my emotional reaction to them than on an unbiased understanding of them?

• How will following Jesus’ example help me change my feelings about people I don’t like?

• Received grace? Give grace!

[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #18603]

Pappy was a pleasant-looking old fellow. He had the whitest hair which he kept neatly cut and combed. His eyes were blue, though faded with age, and they seemed to emit a warmth from within. His face was quite drawn, but when he smiled, even his wrinkles seemed to soften and smile with him.

He had a talent for whistling and did so happily each day as he dusted and swept his pawnshop; even so, he had a secret sadness, but everyone who knew him respected and adored him.

Most of Pappy's customers returned for their good, and he did not do much business, but he did not mind. To him, the shop was not a livelihood as much as a welcome pastime.

There was a room in the back of his shop where he spent time tinkering with a menagerie of his own precious items. He referred to this back room as “memory hall.” In it were pocket watches, clocks, and electric trains. There were miniature steam engines and antique toys made of wood, tin, or cast iron, and there were various other obsolete trinkets as well. Spending time in memory hall delighted him as he recalled many treasured moments from his past. He handled each item with care, and sometimes he would close his eyes and pause to relive a sweet, simple childhood memory.

One day, Pappy was working to his heart's content reassembling an old railroad lantern. As he worked, he whistled the melody of a railroad tune and reminisced about his own past as a switchman. It was a typical day at the shop. Outside, the sun illuminated the clear sky, and a slight wind passed through the front screen door. Whenever the weather was this nice, Pappy kept the inner door open. He enjoyed the fresh air -- almost as much as the distinctive smell of antiques and old engine oil.

As he was polishing his newly restored lantern, he heard the tinkling of his bell on the shop door. The bell, which produced a uniquely charming resound, had been in Pappy's family for over a hundred years. He cherished it dearly and enjoyed sharing its song with all who came to his shop. Although the bell hung on the inside of the main door, Pappy had strung a wire to the screen door so that it would ring whether the inner door was open or not. Prompted by the bell, he left memory hall to greet his customer.

At first, he did not see her. Her shiny, soft curls barely topped the counter. “And how can I help you, little lady?” Pappy's voice was jovial.

“Hello, sir.” The little girl spoke almost in a whisper. She was dainty. Bashful. Innocent. She looked at Pappy with her big brown eyes, then slowly scanned the room in search of something special.

Shyly she told him, “I'd like to buy a present, sir.”

“Well, let's see,” Pappy said, “who is this present for?”

“My grandpa. It's for my grandpa. But I don't know what to get.”

Pappy began to make suggestions. “How about a pocket watch? It's in good condition. I fixed it myself,” he said proudly.

The little girl didn't answer. She had walked to the doorway and put her small hand on the door. She wiggled the door gently to ring the bell. Pappy's face seemed to glow as he saw her smiling with excitement.

“This is just right,” the little girl bubbled. “Momma says grandpa loves music.”

Just then, Pappy's expression changed. Fearful of breaking the little girl's heart, he told her, “I'm sorry, missy. That's not for sale. Maybe your grandpa would like this little radio.”

The little girl looked at the radio, lowered her head, and sadly sighed, “No, I don't think so.”

In an effort to help her understand, Pappy told her the story of how the bell had been in his family for so many years, and that was why he didn't want to sell it.

The little girl looked up at him, and with a giant tear in her eye, sweetly said, “I guess I understand. Thank you, anyway.”

Suddenly, Pappy thought of how the rest of the family was all gone now, except for his estranged daughter whom he had not seen in nearly a decade. Why not, he thought. Why not pass it on to someone who will share it with a loved one? God only knows where it will end up anyway.

“Wait...little lady.” Pappy spoke just as the little girl was going out the door -- just as he was hearing his bell ring for the last time. “I've decided to sell the bell. Here's a hanky. Blow your nose.”

The little girl began to clap her hands. “Oh, thank you, sir. Grandpa will be so happy.”

“Okay, little lady. Okay.” Pappy felt good about helping the child; he knew, however, he would miss the bell. “You must promise to take good care of the bell for your grandpa -- and for me, too, okay?” He carefully placed the bell in a brown paper bag.

“Oh, I promise,” said the little girl. Then, she suddenly became very still and quiet. There was something she had forgotten to ask. She looked up at Pappy with great concern, and again almost in a whisper, asked, “How much will it cost?”

“Well, let's see. How much have you got to spend?” Pappy asked with a grin. The child pulled a small coin purse from her pocket then reached up and emptied two dollars and forty-seven cents onto the counter. After briefly questioning his own sanity, Pappy said, “Little lady, this is your lucky day. That bell costs exactly two dollars and forty-seven cents.”

Later that evening as Pappy prepared to close up shop, he found himself thinking about his bell. Already he had decided not to put up another one. He thought about the child and wondered if her grandpa like his gift. Surely he would cherish anything from such a precious grandchild.

At that moment, just as he was going to turn off the light in memory hall, Pappy thought he heard his bell. Again, he questioned his sanity; he turned toward the door, and there stood the little girl. She was ringing the bell and smiling sweetly.

Pappy was puzzled as he strolled toward the small child. “What's this, little lady? Have you changed your mind?”

“No,” she grinned. “Momma says it's for you.”

Before Pappy had time to say another word, the child's mother stepped into the doorway, and choking back a tear, she gently said, “Hello, Dad.”

The little girl tugged on her grandpa's shirttail. “Here, Grandpa. Here's your hanky. Blow your nose.”

Reconciliation isn't about shedding tears at conferences or saying "I'm sorry" or "I forgive you" every time we get together. Rather, it's about living out the character of Christ and keeping pace with the enduring unity that Christ won for us at Calvary 2,000 years ago.

- Wellington Boone, "The Original Reconciler" {New Man, }July/Augtust, 1997, p. 82

In October of 1978, on the 33rd anniversary of the completion of the Bridge of the River Kwai, Dennis Roland of New York and his former guard, Ryuji, walked together arm in arm, over the black, steel-girded span. Said Roland: "I bear no bitterness (toward the Japanese), but I have many memories."

Although it was not part of his plan, at Calvary rebellious man constructed a bridge. In crucifying the Son of God, man had a part in building the "new and living way" to God. Now all of us, whether we are Greek or Jew, circumcision or uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond or free, can walk together across that bridge. "For He is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us." (Ephesians 2:14)

Years ago in a Western city, a husband and wife became estranged and finally separated. They left the city and resided in different parts of the country. The husband, one day, chanced to return to this city on a matter of business. He went out to the cemetery to the grave of their only son. He was standing by the grave in fond reminiscence, when he heard a step behind him. Turning, he saw his estranged wife. The first inclination of both was to turn away. But they had a common binding interest in that grave; and instead of turning away they clasped hands over that grave of their son and were reconciled one to another. It took nothing less than death to reconcile them!

It takes nothing less than death, the precious blood of Christ, to reconcile man to God. The pronouncement, the proclamation of that, is the gospel message.

--McCartney

When George Washington was stationed in early life at Alexandria, with a regiment under his command, his spirit became heated one day at an election, and he said something very offensive to a Mr. Payne. In response, Payne felled him to the ground with one blow of his cane. On hearing of the insult offered to their commander, the regiment, burning for revenge immediately started for the city; but Washington met them and begged them by their regard for him to return peaceably to their barracks. Thinking himself in the wrong in his hasty expressions, he nobly resolved to make an honorable reparation. The next morning Washington sent a polite note requesting Payne to meet him at the tavern. Payne took it for a challenge, and went in expectation of a duel. However, what was his surprise to find, instead of pistols, a decanter of wine on the table.

Washington rose to meet him and said with a smile, "Mr. Payne, to err is human; but to correct our errors is always honorable. I believe I was wrong yesterday. You have had, I think, some satisfaction; and, if you deem that sufficient, here is my hand. Let us be friends."

Such an act of justice and courtesy few could resist; and Payne became, from that moment through life, an enthusiastic friend and admirer of Washington, who in all of his victories never won a more glorious triumph. When by ruling his own spirit, he subdued the anger of his enemy and won his confidence and love.

--Dictionary Of Illustrations