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"Working in a juvenile facility, I worked with young men whose lives, like my own, were totally decimated by their self-destructive choices. As I stood face to face with a young man, holding him while he struggled with himself, sometimes enduring his threats, his profanity, his hateful looks, his manipulation, his unrealistic and sometimes false sincerity that he will change. I had to learn how to love and have compassion for him-as I began to learn that God loves and has compassion for me. And God's presence was not with power, but in weakness and humility, in unfailing love and patience, and in bottomless forgiveness born on a cross, in suffering, in humiliation, and the experience of walking within the human condition.

Bottomless forgiveness is very important. For if I did not forgive, then there was no chance for the student to learn and to grow. Forgiveness, I learned, was a precursor to change. Many times, I would speak to myself the words of Christ, "Father, forgive him, for he knows not what he does."

This image became an illustration of God's relationship with me. God holds me continuously in God's presence. I am the convicted criminal who lives, consciously and unconsciously, in the grips of a God who loves me and has deep compassion for me; who understands my inner and outer struggle; who endures all that I can do to escape myself and my own captivity; who invests time and energy in my ineffectual folly; and who watches me continuously act in self-destructive ways; yet forgives me at every single turn (as in turning away).

God loves with the hope that I may see what I am doing to myself, to others, and to God."

Via Robert Campbell on UCCHRIST CHATTER, Dec. 30th, 2003