Tough Love

Tough Love
Genesis 44:1-34

A woman came to see me the other day. She thought she had met the love of her life. I had seen her with him. There had developed that light that comes into people’s eyes when they know they are loved. They had started talking about engagement. But then something made her suspect that all was not well, and she had confronted her boyfriend about what might have happened when he went on a trip back east, when she knew he would be seeing a woman with whom he had had a relationship going back to their teenage years. This other woman was still keen on him; and he admitted that he had not only seen her but had slept with her, and that it was not the first time he had done so since the relationship allegedly ended some years ago. I imagined that the woman wanted to come to talk to me about her sense of hurt and grief, but actually she wanted to discuss more specifically something that was both theological and practical in the context. What did forgiveness mean in these circumstances?...