Convicted About Unforgiveness

So earlier this week my daughter was laughing and playing with one of her stuffed animals and, for no apparent reason, said the name of one of the individuals that I've been holding a grudge against.  I said, "Let me tell you a little something about ______.  Do you know that he said we should consider giving you to strangers?"

She looked shocked.

"Yes, it's true.  And not only him.  You know _____?"

"Yes."

"Well, he suggested the same thing.  I was very offended by that evil suggestion....and I still am.  That wasn't very nice of them to say, was it?"

And so my wife hears this conversation and steps in.  She said I should forgive these individuals and that she would pray that G-d would convict me about it.

I think I said to her, "But they didn't treat me like a brother!  Can you imagine [my brother's name] ever saying something like that?  No, because that's not how brothers act.  They treated me like an outsider--an enemy."

Flash forward just a few days...

Today we attended a prayer service at the church we visit.  Can you guess what the pastor asked for people to pray about?  You guessed it:  forgiveness.

Still I was absolutely convinced that didn't apply to me--these individuals are not repentant and we don't have to forgive someone who is not repentant.

And then this verses pops into my head:

"But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us,"  (Romans 5:8)

Yeshua didn't wait for the world to become repentant.  While we were busy sinning, He was busy forgiving.

Yesterday I felt this urge to look up all the instances of hesed in the Tanak.  It was all very obsessive, painstakingly looking at every occurrence of the word.  Oh, and I also felt the need to do the same thing for the word "truth".  So I found verses like this:

"Love and faithfulness meet together; righteousness and peace kiss each other," (Psalm 85:10)

AND:

"And the LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed, The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth," (Exodus 34:6)

Hesed v'Emet...over and over again HaShem was making me study these terms.  Why???

And then the pastor put up the following on a big projection screen:

"The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth," (John 1:14)

May HaShem pardon me for my unforgiveness and help me to be more like His Word, Yeshua who is full of hesed v'emet.  

I am a slow work in progress...