Seven Times Seventy

There's a song that's been on the radio lately, by Chris August. (See title of this post.)

The combination of that song being played on the radio, some of the reading I've done lately, and some situation my life finds itself in have led me to a lot of thinking and reading about rendering forgiveness. Often. Almost obsessively. Luke's account of the crucifixion has become a favored passage of mine.

This is nothing new for me; it's something I struggled with before. Another lifetime ago, it seems. It took a weekend retreat to really make any headway with it. Even then, it still took more than a couple of months to feel myself able to offer true, complete forgiveness.

One of the situations I'm in is nearly identical to the one I was back then. Unfortunately, I don't have the same retreat opportunity I had. In addition, this is particular offense is something that's harder to forgive with each new occurrence. I had the thought that maybe this particular offense is just something that's going to require ongoing forgiveness.

But how can it be complete forgiveness if it's ongoing?

Then I heard the Chris August song frequently. And it got me thinking: how many times is seven times seventy, anyway? 490
So I decided to break it down to something manageable. Every day for seventy weeks. One year, 18 weeks or 4.5 months.
My daily prayers for the past 13 days have included a desire to find forgiveness that comes from my heart. And I'll admit, some days I've tried harder than others to not harbor resentment against the offender. (Well, really, offenders, since I'm applying this concept to more than one set of circumstances.)