"If we only got into the Christ-faith through the door of forgiveness, how can we claim Christ as our home if we aren’t people who forgive?"

Ann Voskamp writes,

Who hasn’t argued hard, been misunderstood, wounded, hurt, who hasn’t been cheated on, talked down, lied about, pierced right through and left heart-broken on some beaten-down back road?

There are a thousand ways to bleed, to nurse wounds and bitterness, and no one knows, a thousand ways to feel like everything is breaking around you.

...How many years have I have stood in sanctuaries and murmured that one line of the Apostles Creed? “I believe in the forgiveness of sins.” Have I really believed?

...If we only got into the Christ-faith through the door of forgiveness, how can we claim Christ as our home if we aren’t people who forgive?

Words and ideology on a page are cheap. Grace and incarnating the love of Christ isn’t.

Read more here.