I know I’ve seriously screwed up, but my skin crawls when you forgive me. In the face of your kindness, I feel trapped and defensive. Maybe it’s not rational, but my inward response is, “I guess you think I’M the only bad one! What’s so horrible about ME that I particularly need to be forgiven?!”

My negative inner narrative says, “I ruin everything!,” and when I hear you forgiving me, it doesn’t sound like freedom, it sounds like proof. I’m the bad one. I’m dangerous, corrupt and reprehensible, and it seems I’m crawling to you so you can pat me on the head and say, “Yes, you ruin everything.”

But if it were true that I can “ruin everything”, that everything is my fault, then everything would be under my control - but I’m not God! I’m just not that powerful! I alone have not “ruined everything”, any more than I have caused every good thing to happen!

Honestly, I’m not much more powerful than a pokey, clumsy hedgehog. Sin itself is world-destroying! That’s why it took the death and resurrection of Jesus to free me from its grip and carry me off to his kingdom! Now, when our sinful natures tap, poke and even stab at each other, accepting forgiveness is not a declaration that I’m the cause of all evil in the world or its solution. Jesus did that work once and for all.

I’m pokey. So are you. Thank God he loves us anyway!

Forgiveness between believers is just consenting to the Big Picture: we little hedgehogs are cared for in the sun-dappled glade of God’s love. You are not God and neither am I. I don’t have to fear that I’m powerful enough to ruin everything. I don’t have to fear that my security depends on your forgiveness, either!

I can receive forgiveness from you as an invitation to remind us BOTH of our freedom and security under the actual Creator and Sustainer - who loves hedgehogs, turning their noses to the light to rest in his bright grace.

‍