''Blessed are the merciful, for they
shall obtain mercy/’ Matthew 5:7
-1. N THIS Be-Happy Attitude is a sure prescription for happiness. Learn to live by this refreshing happy attitude: “It’s not what happens to me that matters most; it’s how I react to what happens to me.”
Be sure of this: If you have the attitude that you should forever be spared from all pain, hurt, and grief, you can be positive that someday you will be jolted with a depressing disillusionment. Sorrow, rejection, bereavement hit all of us at some point in our lives. To expect that somehow we are privileged persons and should be immune from hurt and hardship is unrealistic.
Some even feel, “Because I am a Christian, I should experience no pain and suffering. Because I’m a God-fearing person and a good person, I should experience no rejection or ridicule.” If this is our attitude, we will react to adversity with self-pity. “It’s not fair!” will be our immediate negative reaction. But the quicker we learn that life is not always fair, the sooner we can achieve emotional maturity.
We all have our share of suffering. And we all
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have two choices when we face a terrible experience. We can choose the Be-Happy Attitude, or we can choose the Un-Happy Attitude.
The Un-Happy Attitude is the way of anger and vengeance: “Revenge!” “I’ll get even!” This negative attitude is a sure prescription for misery and unhappiness. People who are obsessed with fighting battles cannot be filled with joy. Their only satisfaction is having the bitter taste of frustration released through their spiteful, vengeful behavior.
Probably more times than we’ll ever know, the unhappiness of those who choose the Un- Happy Attitude is multiplied through the breakdown of their physical health—high blood pressure, heart trouble, strokes, even cancer— produced by stress. This is the result of their choice of an Un-Happy Attitude toward unfortunate circumstances.
But there is an alternative attitude we can choose as we move through life. The positive attitude that will prove to be a Be-Happy Attitude is an option that is open to every person. It is the way of mercy and forgiveness—choosing to react positively and hopefully to whatever negative experiences that may befall us.
The good news I have for you is: God promises mercy adequate enough to meet any tragedy.
Jesus promised in the fifth Beatitude:
“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.” This Beatitude holds three things— first, a promise; second, a power principle that has universal application; and third, a prescription for happy living.
THE PROMISE
Many people in my congregation would testify to the truth of God’s promise in this Beatitude. Their testimony is that when an unexpected tragedy hits, they have found the capacity to find happiness anyway. Now, that’s not human nature. The natural tendency would be to get angry, bitter, and cynical—to say, “There is no God.” When a person reacts positively to tragedy—that’s a miracle. Psalm 23 concludes with the glorious line: “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.” That’s God’s way of saying that life will often be filled with goodness, but that even when God’s goodness cannot be seen. His mercy can be experienced! In the midst of tears, heartbreak, enormous loss, and terrible sorrow, suddenly a sweet mood, like a gentle kiss, will touch your wounded heart. That experience is called mercy. It comes as an expression of God’s love.
Throughout the Scriptures God promises that He will be merciful to us:
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® “His mercy is on those who fear [trust] him” (Luke 1:50).
® “God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us... made us alive together with Christ” (Eph. 2:46).
® “He saved us, not because of deeds done by us in righteousness, but in virtue of his own mercy” (Titus 3:5).
The promise is there! It is for you! What wonderful news! What wonderful assurance! No matter where our road will lead, no matter what pain may hit, no matter what we do, God will be there with His mercy to forgive us, to hold us up, and carry us through the tough times. But this is only half of the Beatitude: “. . . for they shall obtain mercy.” The other half is, “Blessed are the merciful...”
The question is: Which comes first? Do we need to be merciful before God will be merciful to us? Or does God need to be merciful to us before we can be merciful to others? What did Jesus mean when He said, “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy”?
I believe Jesus meant:
® God will be merciful to us.
® Then we will be merciful to others.
® Mercy will then come from a variety of sources.
The first step, then, is to accept God’s mercy. All we need to do is accept the promise of the
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Beatitude. It is God’s promise that if we treat people mercifully, God will be merciful to us.
I first heard the following story thirty-five years ago. Years later, a variation appeared and was made famous by my friend, Tony Orlando, in his song, “Tie a Yellow Ribbon ’Round the Old Oak Tree.” I have been told it’s a true story, and I believe it, because I believe in the power of mercy.
Three teenagers boarded a bus in New Jersey. Seated on the bus was a quiet, poorly dressed man who sat alone and silent. When the bus made its first stop, everybody got off except this one man, who remained aloof and alone. When the kids came back on the bus, one of them said something nice to him and he smiled shyly.
At the next bus stop, as everybody got off, the last teenager turned and said to the man, “Come on. Get off with us. At least stretch your legs.”
So he got off. The teenagers invited him to have lunch with them. One of the young people said, “We are going to Florida for a weekend in the sun. It is nice in Florida, they say.”
He said, “Yes, it is.”
“Have you been there?”
“Oh, yes,” he said, “I used to live there.”
One said, “Well, do you still have a home and family?”
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He hesitated. “I—I don’t know,” he said, finally.
“What do you mean, you don’t know?” the teenager persisted.
Caught up by their warmth and their sincerity, he shared this story with them:
“Many years ago, I was sentenced to Federal prison. I had a beautiful wife and wonderful children. I said to her, ‘Honey, don’t write to me. I won’t write to you. The kids should not know that their dad is in prison. If you want to, go ahead and find another man—somebody who will be a good father to those boys.’
“I don’t know if she kept her part of the bargain. I kept mine. Last week when I knew for sure I was getting out, I wrote a letter to our old address; it’s just outside of Jacksonville. I said to her, ‘If you are still living there and get this letter, if you haven’t found anyone else, and if there is a chance of you taking me back— here is how you can let me know. I will be on the bus as it comes through town. I want you to take a piece of white cloth and hang it in the old oak tree right outside of town.”
When they got back on the bus and they were about ten miles from Jacksonville, all the teenagers moved to this man’s side of the bus and pressed their faces against the windows. Just as they came to the outskirts of Jackson-
ville there was the big oak tree. The teenagers let out a yell and they jumped out of their seats. They hugged each other and danced in the center of the aisle. All they said was, “Look at it! Look at it!”
Not a single white cloth was tied to the tree. Instead, there was a white bedsheet, a white dress, a little boy’s white trousers, and white pillow cases! The whole tree was covered with dozens of pieces of white cloth!
That is the way God treats you and me. It is a promise from God that He will forget the past and erase the record we have rolled up. It is a promise that He will throw away the black pages of our book and give us the kind of big welcome that the Prodigal Son received from his father, who said, “My son that was lost is found and is home again” (Luke 15:24, my paraphrase). This is the promise of this Beatitude.
THE POWER PRINCIPLE
The Bible carries a promise—that God will be merciful to us. It also teaches a power principle which appears over and over in the Bible, stated different ways:
# “If you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matt. 6:15).
® “The measure you give will be the measure you get” (Matt. 7:2).
® “Cast your bread upon the waters, for you will find it after many days” (Eccles. 11:1).
® “Whatever a man sows, that will he also reap” (Gal. 6:7).
Give a little, you get a little back. Give a lot, you get a lot back. This is the law of proportionate return that Jesus is teaching in these verses—and this Beatitude. If you are critical, you can expect people to criticize you. If you gossip about people, you can be sure these same people are going to gossip about you. It is a law of life as real and unavoidable as the physical laws that control our world and our bodies.
Once, when I had laryngitis, I went to my throat doctor. The first thing he did was to get some gauze, wrap it around my tongue, pull my tongue out as far as he could, and stick a flat instrument far back in my throat. Inevitably, I gagged. He did it again. I gagged.
I said, “Done?”
To my dismay he said, “No, I have to do it again. I didn’t get to see the vocal cords.” Once more he prepared my tongue with another clean piece of gauze.
I said, “This time I’ll practice positive thinking and I won’t gag.”
He said, “Dr. Schuller, that won’t work.”
“Won’t work?” I was appalled! That was the
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first time anybody had told me that possibility thinking wouldn’t work.
The doctor quickly added, “Dr. Schuller, the gag is a reflex. Here, let me show you. Cross your legs.” 1 crossed my legs. He hit my knee. My leg kicked up.
He said, “That’s a reflex. The gag is also a reflex. Positive thinking cannot control reflexes, because reflexes come from the spinal cord. They don’t pass through the brain.”
Let me tell you something. In life there is a principle that you can compare with this biological reflex. If you act a certain way, you will get a certain response; there will be a guaranteed reflex action.
Here is a fundamental rule of life: If you want people to treat you nicely, treat them nicely. For every action, there is a reaction. For every positive action, there is a positive reaction. For every negative action, there is a negative reaction.
If you really want to get high on happiness, look at this Beatitude, and then live it. It really works. It’s impossible to give anything away. Whatever you give away will always come back to you.
Let me illustrate with a simple object—a seed. It’s impossible to throw away seeds. If you throw them on the ground, they sprout and grow.
As many of you know, I was born on an Iowa farm. Adjoining my family’s farm was a river, which thrilled me because I loved to fish. I remember one time when a city kid came for a few weeks to visit the neighbors across the road. The city kid was our neighbor’s nephew. His uncle had welcomed him but warned that he would have to help out with the work.
One day the city kid’s Uncle John gave his nephew a can of beans to plant. He explained, “Just dig a little hole, put in a couple of beans, and stomp the dirt down on top of them. Do it all the way along the fence until you get to the end.”
Unaware of the task that had been assigned to this city lad, I invited him to join me fishing. He replied, “Uncle John said I have to plant these beans. He said that I have to dig a little hole, put in three beans, and stomp it down.”
I said, “Oh, that’s too bad; I wish you could go fishing with me. Ever been fishing?”
“No, I’d like to go fishing with you, but I’ve got to finish these beans.” From the looks of the full can, it appeared that he’d just started. Directly in front of him was a stump. Suddenly he had an idea! “Uncle John will never know,” he said, as he dug a hole, dumped in all the beans, and covered them with dirt. He turned away from his task and said, “Let’s go fishing!”
We had a grand time, and we caught a good
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number of fish. Coming home with all our catch, we ran into Uncle John.
He said “I see you’ve been fishin’.... did you get all the beans planted?”
His nephew said, “Sure did. Uncle John.”
“That’s great. Glad to hear it. And you still had time to fish?”
“M-m-m-, yeah.”
“I’m surprised you were able to plant them so quickly.”
He answered, “I work fast.”
Uncle John seemed to accept his word for it. Soon it was time for the boy to return home. Months passed. The summer was drawing to a close. The city kid returned for a last visit before school started.
Uncle John said to him, “Hey, would you like to see those beans you planted?” They walked out behind the farmhouse. There was a neat row of beans for about fifty feet. Suddenly there was a stump of a tree covered with uncontrolled vines!
You can’t fool nature, and you can’t play with God. You can’t tamper with natural laws. And this is a natural law: If you treat people nicely, you will probably be treated nicely. The kinder you are to others, the more kindness you are likely to receive in life. It is the law of proportionate return, and there’s no way of getting around it.
THE PRESCRIPTION
The prescription for joyful living is very simple: If you want to be happy, treat people right. If you carry somebody else’s burdens, in the process you’ll discover the secret of happiness.
Everybody wants to be happy. I’ve observed in the world today that there are those who are trying to reach happiness with selfishness, yet these people end up in a hell on earth. There are others who try to obtain joy by following the laws of Christ, by helping somebody else. If you live by the laws of Christ and choose to look for people who have burdens, you might be able to help them. But if you look for your own happiness, ignoring the needs of those around you, you will lose out altogether.
There is a story of a man who had a dream one night. He dreamed that he died and found himself immediately in a large room. In the room there was a huge banquet table filled with all sorts of delicious food. Around the banquet table were people seated on chairs, obviously hungry. But the chairs were five feet from the edge of the table and the people apparently could not get out of the chairs. Furthermore, their arms were not long enough to reach the food on the table.
In the dream there was one single large spoon, five feet long. Everyone was fighting.
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quarreling, pushing each other, trying to grab hold of that spoon. Finally, in an awful scene, one strong bully got hold of the spoon. He reached out, picked up some food, and turned it to feed himself, only to find that the spoon was so long that as he held it out he could not touch his mouth. The food fell off.
Immediately, someone else grabbed the spoon. Again, the person reached far enough to pick up the food, but he could not feed himself. The handle was too long.
In the dream, the man who was observing it all said to his guide, “This is hell—to have food and not be able to eat it.”
The guide replied, “Where do you think you are? This is hell. But this is not your place. Come with me.”
And they went into another room. In this room there was also a long table filled with food, exactly as in the other room. Everyone was seated in chairs, and for some reason they, too, seemed unable to get out of their chairs.
Like the others, they were unable to reach the food on the table. Yet they had a satisfied, pleasant look on their faces. Only then did the visitor see the reason why. Exactly as before, there was only one spoon. It, too, had a handle five feet long. Yet no one was fighting for it. In fact, one man, who held the handle, reached out, picked up the food, and put it into the
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mouth of someone else, who ate it and was satisfied.
That person then took the spoon by the handle, reached for the food from the table, and put it back to the mouth of the man who had just given him something to eat. And the guide said, “This is heaven.”
“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.”
Another Bible verse says it in another way, “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ” (Gal. 6:2).
It is impossible to have thoughts of resentment and jealousy, anger and hate and ill-will— and be happy. You cannot sow these negative emotional seeds and expect to raise a harvest of smiles and laughter. Nobody can be happy and bitter at the same time. It is so incredibly simple.
The secret to the prescription then is to care. Caring becomes carrying.
I am sure you have heard of Mother Teresa of Calcutta. She’s been listed frequently in Good Housekeeping magazine’s list of most-admired women. She is one of the most beautiful persons alive in the world today.
You probably know that Mother Teresa is about sixty years old and that she is an amazing person. But let me tell you more about her. Mother Teresa was the child of a peasant family
in Yugoslavia. She was taken regularly to church, where she met Jesus Christ. As a teenager she felt a calling to go into full-time church work, and she became a Catholic sister. One day a missionary spoke to her home congregation about the great need to bring Christ to the people in India, so Teresa volunteered and was accepted for a teaching post in Calcutta.
At the convent in Calcutta, Teresa enjoyed very lovely quarters. She had beautiful accommodations that were surrounded by lovely gardens. She did her teaching in a very lovely and attractive classroom. But one day she had to make a trip to the dirtiest part of the town. When she walked the streets alone, through the back parts of Calcutta, she saw something she had never seen before. She saw human beings dying, and nobody was paying any attention to them. When she inquired, she found that this was very common. Nobody had time for the dying; there was no place for them to go. The young nun was haunted by this terrible situation. She felt that Jesus Christ was saying to her, “I am going to call you to serve the poorest of the poor. I am calling you to minister not to the living, but to the dying.”
This was such a strong call that she asked the Church to release her from her vows. It took two years, but finally she was released. No longer a nun, she was sent out of the convent
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and into the streets of Calcutta. With only a few rupees, or pennies, in her pocket, she shuffled down the streets with no promise of a meal and no promise of clothing from the church. She was on her own, and she prayed, “Jesus, lead me to somebody who is dying all alone.”
Two blocks away she saw an old lady lying in the gutter on the main street. The living body was being eaten by the rats that were running in the gutter. She picked up the woman and literally dragged her to the nearest hospital. She was refused admittance. “But,” she exclaimed, “this woman is dying.” She was told, “People die in the streets of Calcutta all the time. We cannot take her.” Teresa refused to leave until they had taken the dying woman. She said, “If there is a God in heaven, and a Christ we love, nobody should die alone.”
Shortly thereafter Teresa went to the city government and asked for an empty room—“a place where I can build a home for the dying.” The civil authorities told her, “Well, we have this empty Hindu temple of Kali, if that would suit you.” She said, “Beautiful. It would be beautiful for God. That is all I want to do in my life—something beautiful for God.”
Two other sisters heard about Teresa’s project, and they helped to drag the dying from the streets into this Hindu temple. Without medicine, without money, without an organization.
without any backing, they did what they could, and nobody died in their place without at least a touch on the cheek and a kind word: “We love you.” “Go in peace with God.” They did not die alone.
Today, Teresa—or Mother Teresa, as she is widely known—is probably the closest thing to an authentic saint living on planet earth. She has created her own Sisterhood called the Sisters of Charity. It is a pontificate, which means it is now recognized directly below the Pope who, when he came to Calcutta to see what this strange ex-nun was doing, was so impressed that he gave her as a gift his own private, expensive white limousine. She took one look at this big, expensive car and said, “Oh, thank you.”
The first thing she did was to announce a raffle. The money went for her house for the dying. Today, she has over ten thousand dying lepers in her colony. Her colonies have spread into twenty-eight cities, to Ceylon, to the Indian people who live in London, Rome, Venezuela, and Australia. She and all of those who are members of the Missionaries of Charity have taken the vow of total poverty. The only thing they may own is the cheapest cotton garment and a pair of sandals. Total surrender!
Malcolm Muggeridge, who interviewed Mother Teresa on the British Broadcasting
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Company and later visited her in Calcutta, said, “The thing I noticed about you and the hundreds of sisters who now form your team is that you all look so happy. Is it a put-on?” She said, “Oh no, not at all. Nothing makes you happier than when you really reach out in mercy to someone who is badly hurt.”
“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.” Service is its own reward. A prescription for joyful living is: “Be good, be kind, be unselfish. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
If you want positive things to happen, you must be positive. If you want to be friendly with people and if you want people to be friendly toward you, be friendly to them. If you are surrounded by undesirable people, change them into good people.
How do you change them into good people? Bring the best out of them! How do you bring the best out of them? Call attention to the best that is within them! Until they begin to believe they are beautiful people, they will not treat you beautifully.
I’ll never forget the young wife who came to see me. She complained, “My husband never compliments me. All he does is criticize! It doesn’t matter what I do, how hard I work; I only hear how I could have done it better!”
I suggested, “You know that people who are
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highly critical often suffer from a low selfesteem. Is it possible that your husband has trouble in that regard?”
She thought for a moment. “Yes, I think that’s possible.”
“Well,” I replied, “then it seems to me that the way to help him with his self-esteem and his critical remarks is for you to start complimenting him!”
“Oh! I never thought of that!” she cried. “But you’re right! I can’t remember the last time I complimented him. I’ve been so busy looking for compliments from him that I’ve completely neglected compliments for him.”
If you want to change your world, change yourself. How do you change yourself? How do you become this kind of positive-thinking person? I know only one way. Education does not do it. Legislation does not do it. However, there is a living God—and a living Christ—who does. Christ can come into hearts that are filled with fear, anger, bitterness, and hurt, and He can liberate them with His mercy. It can happen to you. It happens when you meet Jesus Christ and ask Him to take over your life.
If you want to treat people mercifully, you have to begin by treating yourself mercifully. Accept yourself by knowing that Christ accepts you just as you are! However, if you lack a deep inner sense of self-esteem and self-worth, you
will constantly have problems with other people. You won’t treat them mercifully. You’ll be unkind. You’ll be critical or you’ll gossip. You’ll lash back until you’ve undermined the most important aspects of your life—and you find it collapsed around you.
Think about it. What is it that keeps us from treating people mercifully? It’s resentment, jealousy, or the feeling that someone is a threat to you. If you can’t handle resentment, jealousy, or “victimitis,” then deep down in your own mind, heart, and soul you need to deal with your lack of a positive self-image. Your negative reactions are the result of hidden wounds that need to be healed.
HEALING FOR THE HIDDEN WOUND
Do you have trouble with this Be-Happy Attitude? Do you have trouble being merciful? Are you critical of yourself as well as of others? If so, then you need to identify, isolate, and heal your hidden wounds. The first step toward healing is to realize that you are not alone. Everyone has been wounded at some time or another. Even Jesus, the Son of God, had wounds. Stop and count them; there were six:
(1) The ankles, where the nail went through.
(2) The palms of the hands, which were also pierced by nails.
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(3) The brow, which was bloodied by the crown of thorns.
(4) The side, which was slashed by a spear.
(5) The back, which bore the stripes of a lashing.
Those are five of Christ’s wounds. But the sixth wound was the hidden wound:
(6) The wound in His heart, placed there by the kiss of one of His own disciples. The hidden wound was the most painful of them all.
We all have them, don’t we? We may disguise our wounds behind a smile and keep our guard up. But if we really searched our lives, exposed ourselves, we would find that every person has a secret pain, an intimate agony, a private hurt—a very isolated, unrevealed, unexposed wound.
Society inflicts hidden wounds on us. Some of you have been the victims of racial or ethnic prejudice, or of some other form of painful discrimination such as sexism or ageism. You know the discomfort of being laughed at, ignored, not being allowed to fulfill your vocational dreams, just because you are a certain race, sex, or age.
Sometimes those people closest to us inflict the deepest, most painful wounds. Some of you would weep right now, if I touched the tender memory, because of what a father or a mother,
a spouse, child, lover, employer, or friend did to you.
Other hidden wounds we inflict on ourselves. We react too negatively to circumstances; we wound ourselves because we take them much too seriously. We read too much into other people’s actions and exaggerate their rejection of us.
The hidden wounds you carry with you today—those private hurts that you can’t talk about—what were the weapons that inflicted them on your heart? Look at the wounds of Jesus. The external wounds were inflicted by nails, a crown of thorns, a spear, a lash. But His hidden wound was caused by a kiss.
The weapons that wounded you are probably just as common as a kiss. They are words, looks, body language. Someone turned his or her back on you, didn’t return your gesture of love and friendship, and that hurt. You were received with silence; maybe it was a snub. You were passed over. You never got the invitation. You were rebuffed. Words, looks, actions— these are the horrible weapons that inflict hidden wounds in human hearts.
Now the question is. What do we do with these hidden wounds? How do we handle them?
First of all, don’t nurse them. There are many people who delight in nursing their hidden wounds. They still remember how their mother
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treated them. How their father treated them. How their first husband or first wife treated them. Thirty years later they are still obsessed with the wound. This is a neurotic, negative reaction.
Don't curse them. Don’t let your wounds make you a bitter person. Don’t allow anger at God or at the person who hurt you so deeply control your life. Don’t curse your hurts, and don't rehearse them. Try to forget them. Remember, you can’t forget your hurts if you keep talking about them all the time. One of the great men on the staff of the church for thirty years here was a minister named Dr. Henry Poppen. Dr. Henry Poppen had been a missionary in China and was held prisoner for many months in a little town in China when the Communists took over. He was kept in solitary confinement, and the treatment he received was abysmal. The experience was tragic. It was horrific. It was awful. He escaped by a miracle; most of the other missionaries were killed on sight. Well, when he came out he was an emotionally wounded man. But he found healing for that wound through a doctor who said, “Don’t talk about it any more. Just forget it.” In Dr. Poppen’s case, these words of advice were just what he needed. His memories were so ugly that to have shared them over and over would
have only made them that much more a part of his life.
Don’t nurse the wound. Don’t curse the wound. Don’t keep rehearsing the wounding experience. What do you do with your hidden wounds? Immerse them. Drown them in a life of noble service.
I remember a time in the early years of my ministry when I had a real personal problem with someone. Sometimes it hurt me so badly I didn’t know how to handle it. At these times my wife always had a solution. She’d say, “I think you should go out and call on Rosie Gray.” Or “I think you ought to visit Marie; it was a year ago that her husband died.”
So I would go out to the hospitals and I would go calling on people. I would immerse myself as a pastor in the hearts of people who were hurting. And in the process, my little hidden wound was just drowned to death. It up and died.
How do you handle your hidden wounds? Don’t nurse them. Don’t curse them. Don’t rehearse them. Do immerse them. And finally, reverse them. Turn the negative into a positive. You do that when you allow your wound to turn you into a more sensitive, compassionate, considerate, thoughtful, merciful, gracious person.
If your wound is something that you can’t
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share with others without criticizing somebody else or tearing him or her down, then you have to suffer in silence. If that’s the case, then trust God. Let Him heal your hidden wounds.
She is no longer with us—our dear Schug. Her name was Bernice Schug, but my children called her simply “Schug.” Since both my wife’s and my families lived in the Midwest, our children were unable to spend much time with their grandparents.
When we met Schug at church she was a widow. Her own grandchildren lived in northern California, so she was unable to see them as often as she liked. It was inevitable then that Schug would become our California grandmother. She lavished love and poppy-seed rolls on us and our children. She stayed over with the children when my wife had our last two children. She ate meals with us, she cared for our children, yet none of us knew how deep her hidden wound was.
One day Schug came to me and said, “Bob, I was reading in the church bulletin today that you are having a guest speaker next Sunday. I see you’re having a Kamikaze pilot as your guest.”
Oh! I remembered then that Schug’s son had been killed in World War II by a Kamikaze pilot. “That’s right, Schug. This particular pilot was trained as a Kamikaze and would have died
as a Kamikaze had the war not ended when it did. But he has a tremendous story to tell of how he found Jesus.”
“That may be. I don’t think I will be in church that Sunday, though. I don’t think I could handle it.”
“I understand,” I replied. “I don’t think it will hurt if you miss one Sunday.”
The next Sunday the Japanese pilot shared his story. His love and gratitude for Jesus shone from his black eyes. You could feel the love and release he had found.
People were moved by his testimony. And when the service was over, my associate pastor walked with him back down the aisle to the rear of the church.
Suddenly as they approached the last pew, an older woman stepped out. She stood firmly in front of the Kamikaze pilot and blocked his exit. She looked at him squarely and said, “My son was killed in the war by a Kamikaze!”
It was Schug. We all held our breath as she continued, “God has forgiven you for your sins, and tonight He has forgiven me of mine.”
She threw her arms around this little Japanese pilot and hugged him and cried and cried as she released all the bitterness and anger that had been harbored for so many years.
Forgive a Kamikaze pilot, when a fellow pilot
“J . . . treat others ... others to treat me.” 181
had killed a beloved son? Impossible! Yes, it is impossible for us, but not impossible for God!
After all, who is a better teacher on the subject of forgiveness than Jesus Christ? When He hung on the cross, brutally whipped, mocked with a crown of thorns, betrayed by His friend, and deserted by His disciples, what did He say to the people who watched Him die?
He said, ^‘Forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34).
Jesus is an expert on forgiveness. Let Him forgive you and heal you of your hidden wounds.
If you are merciful, people will treat you mercifully. If you are merciful, then God will release you from vengeful attitudes that will eat at you and destroy you. When you follow the example that Christ set, you will find, much to your surprise, that God will step in and bless you, too, with an Easter morning!
'■ .liv *?.'■ ^.,fevi'*s; -f. 1
Be-Happy Attitude ^6