<p style="text-align: justify;">I have a confession to make.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">I believe in the power of redemption.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">I believe that redemption is available to anyone and that no one is beyond redemption.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Except when I don’t.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">You see, redemption is fine, as long as the ‘candidates’ are ‘out there’ or part of some other nebulous, non-specific entity.  I truly believe that murderers, rapists, thieves, governments, and even child predators can be redeemed someday.  For the most part, those are all ‘out there’, and don’t affect me personally.  Detachment makes it easy.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">It’s when the person to be redeemed is someone who has hurt either me or someone close to me that believing in redemption becomes difficult bordering on impossible.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">In <em>The Cost of Discipleship</em>, Dietrich Bonheoffer starts off with a difficult and convicting treatise on the difference between cheap grace and costly grace.  Cheap grace is given away as a commodity, costs us nothing, and makes grace simply a bullet point in a 3-point sermon.  Costly grace is so named because it costs us <em>everything</em>.  Embracing costly grace costs us our desires, our plans, our biases, our very lives.  It’s uncomfortable.  It’s painful. It’s hard.  But most of all, it exposes our vulnerability.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">I see redemption in the same light, and I’ll admit, I’m hooked on the addictiveness of cheap redemption and am even willing to pay the cost for inexpensive and slightly expensive redemption.  Costly redemption comes with a price tag that can cause us to gasp when we see it.  We gasp out of shock that the entry fee to redemption is to be paid by us, and not by ‘them’.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">That entry fee is our willingness to forgive.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The first step on someone else’s journey to redemption is our forgiveness, and that can be a cost we’re not willing to bear.  Yet, as Christians, forgiveness, true forgiveness, should flow from us in everything we do and to everyone we encounter.  In Matthew 18, Jesus tells his disciples that “<em>whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be</em><strong><em></em></strong><em>loosed in heaven</em>.” He then continues with the Parable of the Unmerciful Servant, which begins by Peter asking Jesus “<em>How many times should I forgive someone who wrongs me?  Seven times</em>?”  Jesus responds by turning Lamech’s lament (Genesis 4) on its head by saying “<em>No.  Seventy times seven</em>”.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The lesson is clear.  Just as Christ’s forgiveness sets us free, so our forgiveness sets others free, and free to seek redemption.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Fourteen years ago, my ex-wife walked out on me.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Eight years ago, she walked out on our daughters.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Two weeks ago, due to the diligence of my oldest daughter, she has returned.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">I admit it.   I’m still angry and hurt.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">I have no idea if she wants to seek redemption.  To be honest, it really doesn’t matter.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">What matters is how I answer the question I ask myself.  The question we should all ask ourselves in this situation.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Who are we to hold redemption hostage?</p>