Are you Microsoft or Yahoo?  If you're Microsoft, you're looking for someone to take to the prom.  If you're Yahoo, your dance card is filled.  Today's Wall Street Journal gives us the latest in the on-off-maybe on relationship between the corporate giants.  After Yahoo turned down Microsoft's last takeover offer, the deal seemed dead.  But now that Yahoo and Google are talking about a search-related merger, Microsoft is interested again.  In the word of corporate mergers, forgiveness can be good business.

If only it were that simple in the rest of life.  We're learning to find the true happiness only Jesus can give.  So far we've discovered four keys: admit your need of God, mourn when you sin, stay submitted to the Spirit, and pursue a right relationships with God, others, and yourself.  Now we come to the fifth Beatitude: "Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy" (Matthew 5:7).  What is this "mercy"?

Here's the short answer: grace is getting what you don't deserve--mercy is not getting what you do deserve.  It's mercy to be forgiven.  It's mercy to forgive.  That's what mercy is; now, what is mercy not?

Twenty-five years ago, Lewis Smedes published a now-classic work on the subject, titled Forgive and Forget.  Dr. Smedes told us what forgiveness is not.  It is not forgetting.  God can forgive our confessed sins and forget them.  In fact, he does: Isaiah 43:25 promises that he "remembers them no more."  But you and I cannot do this.  Human beings cannot simply reformat the disk or erase the tape.  You can pull the nail out of your soul, but the hole remains.

Forgiving is not excusing the behavior which hurt you.  The person chose to do that which hurts you today.  Forgiving is not pretending that you're not hurt.  You can carry on, but the pain remains and often grows.  Forgiving is not tolerating.  You may have to tolerate your employer, or your sibling, or your son-in-law.  That doesn't mean that you've forgiven him.

To forgive is to pardon.  It is to refuse to punish, even though you have every right to do so.  It is the governor pardoning the criminal--he doesn't forget about the crime, or excuse it, or pretend it didn't occur, or tolerate the behavior.  He simply chooses not to punish, though he could.

Who needs your pardon this morning?  Let's continue tomorrow.

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