4 YEARS SINCE THIS WAS FIRST POSTED
Travelling down the Motorway on a 4hrs journey and listening to different artistes invited to participate in a particular gospel album.
My wife was enjoying herself while I talked briefly on some artistes she had no information about.
Then came up one guy who has been very instrumental to the advancement of gospel songs and has released many Grammy award winning songs.
I was ready to tell my wife about this guy but it was not his achievements that first came to my mind! It was the scandal of his early life.
Just before I opened my mouth, I got a hook on my tongue, and a whisper "I have forgiven him". And so it ended. My wife had no idea why I stopped talking, she just carried on listening to this great minister. I believe she will know why now if and when she reads this piece.
Shooting along at 70mph (not sure I was strictly obedient to that) and covering a lot of ground, I ruminated for about 10 minutes why it was the scandal of the early 80s when I was still a child that I wanted to start telling my wife who was definitely still in heaven then!
Why didn't I start with his great achievements of the 90s? Why not the great strides and sacrifices he committed into the ministry?
Why didn't I list out the numerous songs he wrote or sang which have become part and parcel of our church praise and worship songs of today?
This was a man who lost all due to his error of judgement, and had repented, he has been very sorry for his mistakes and had been restored back to the ministry. In fact, if not for the media way of record keeping, I wouldn't have known about his misdeeds that I was now using to judge him. When I knew him, I had no idea of what he had done when I was a child but there I was judging him as an adult almost 3 decades after!
The word 'why' kept hitting my heart until I asked my wife to pass me a drink as I felt my throat getting parched. I sincerely said sorry in my heart and joined my wife mouthing to the songs that followed.
Truth is, we Christians are the experts in killing our wounded soldiers. When enemies stab our fellow soldiers and they are at their weakest, rather than help pull them up and bind up their wounds, we allow infestation of the wounds to take place.
And if their wounds have been healed, and they are up and running, we look for the scars, we open them and draw more blood. That way, they perpetually carry on with wounds that are never allowed to heal. Opening of the scar was what I was about to do at that moment before my tongue went hanging.
How many times have we stabbed rather than bind up the wounded's wounds?
How many times have you tried to introduce people behind their backs and the only thing you could use to describe them was their errors of judgement decades or months past?
God has forgiven and wiped clean slates of many people, but we humans that God sacrificed His only son for would take pleasure in digging up the past on certain individuals, especially when it seemed we are competing for the same thing.
Repent and stop it! We have no right to condemn the one who God has forgiven. And we are the ones sinning when we take 'sober' pleasure and 'somber' tone in narrating someone's errors. We are so fake!
Look for the good in people and talk about them rather than report or spread the wrongs of yesteryears into the hearts of pure and innocent people. Even, pray for them if there is no sign of repentance in them yet!
Thank God he stopped that rot in me at the nick of time, and thank God her heart is still pure.
Save your children, your friends, and people around you from heart pollution. Just let bygone be bygone to God's glory.
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