The Genesis scripture may not be familiar or comfortable. We frequently quote scriptures extolling God’s compassion, mercy, and forgiveness, and rightfully so. But there are also stories of how hard it is for God to forgive, and the work that goes into God’s compassion. Such scriptures provide relief for us mere humans, who also struggle with the work of forgiving, especially if, in Matthew, we must do it over and over again. Forgiving requires an exhausting, complicated combination of mental and emotional and even physical effort. To forgive is to struggle with the limits of our own power, to say that we cannot go back and make things right in the past, but also to reach out and grasp the very heights of God’s power, to say that there may be a way to move forward rightly into the future.
