Little Forgiveness, Little Love...

Hi friends,

When I was thinking about this statement of Jesus, "Whoever has been forgiven little, loves little," I thought of an illustration from everyday life that may help us to understand the truth of this saying. Jesus gives his own example of two people who owe two amounts of money - one large and one small - and who are both forgiven their debt. The question, 'who will love the one who forgave the debt more?' has an obvious answer. 

The example I thought of was a person's house with a yard covered in autumn leaves. If your whole yard is covered thickly with leaves and you are too weak or busy to rake and remove them, you would be incredibly grateful if someone came along and did that for you, free of charge. You would (hopefully) thank them profusely and think very highly of them and their kind service to you. On the other hand, if you only had three leaves sitting on your nicely manicured lawn, and someone came along and removed them, then told you of their service, you may well simply shrug and think 'well, that was no big deal.' 

But what if your lawn was full of leaves but you couldn't see them for some reason? If someone came along and removed them for you out of loving service, you wouldn't care because you wouldn't think you needed their service. This last example is probably true of the Pharisee who was hosting Jesus for dinner. It wasn't that he had no or only a few sins that needed forgiveness, but that he couldn't see the sin in his heart and life. He couldn't see the pride and superiority, the lack of reliance on God, the critical and judgmental spirit of others, and probably more that are unnamed. Because he couldn't see his sin and didn't recognise his need of forgiveness, his love for Jesus was meagre compared to the woman who was thoroughly aware of her sin, and thoroughly loved the one who forgave her. 

Which of these examples describes you? Are you aware of your yard full of leaves that need removing? Do you think you only have a few so it's no big deal? Or are you blind to the number of leaves piling up on your lawn that you need someone to do something about? Only Jesus can remove our sin and offer forgiveness and cleansing. Are we worshipping him in love, or serving him from a distance?

I used a couple of new Sweet 'n Sassy sets this month on this page: Fall Background for the leaves, and Faith Wordfetti Too for the black wordfetti which I embossed with white onto black card. The background was painted with acrylics, and the verse was stamped with a combination of Bitty Minnie Alpha and Hello My Name Is. The house and trees are from Love Your Neighbor. 

Let's be like the woman in Luke 7:36-50 who knows the depths of her sin, and loves extravagantly the one who has forgiven her.

Be blessed...

x Amy x