4. Ross's dog on forgiveness
Ross's dog on forgiveness
The dog, we have talked about Ross’s dog before, is concerned
He says that in the essay we did last night on forgiveness, basically, that the math is wrong.
He says he tossed and turned most of the night trying to figure it out, because I had taken the calculator.
This is what we had last night…
We pray too much…. 09.04.06
I wonder if we are prepared for God to answer our prayers?
Lets suppose we pray for “thy kingdom come”. Are we sure we can handle that? Maybe we pray for world peace, are we ready for that?
Perhaps we pray for Israel… are we ready in our hearts for that too? Imagine the fallout amongst the Christians and Muslims….
And say, today we ask for forgiveness for our sins, tomorrow are we going to ask to be forgiven the same sin? As well as tomorrows sins. And then the next day, and so on. At the end of a year, suppose we were conscious of say, just 10 sins a day, that would be 3,650 sins.
After 10 years, that is, 10 x 365 x 10 = 36500 sins. After 50 years, that is 182500. Not counting leap days. But if we sin 100 times a day on average, and who wouldn’t? That would be 1,825,000 sins to remember when we pray for forgiveness. At that stage we are,
like 60 years old. Just a pup. By the time we are 90 we have to pray for forgiveness for another 30 years worth, like 1,095,000. And my mum is 94 not out as we speak…. And she forgets what she has already said, so, big problem huh?
That adds up to 2,920,000 sins to be forgiven if we just sinned 100 times a day.
Then what if we forgot to beg forgiveness for some of them? More sinning.
But, being a clever people, enlightened, educated, suppose that in begging forgiveness, we get so efficient that we can do one sin-beg every minute, there are 60 x 24 = 1440 minutes in a 24 hour period.
Suppose though that because we are old, we need sleep, we need to eat etc, that we can only pray 12 hours a day, then we might get through 720 sin-begs a day.
720 x 365 x 80 = 21,024,000.
In that case, assuming God would hear one a minute, we could possibly get in front. But if your sins are like my sins, maybe we need more than 1 minute. We break even at 12 minutes . What sin could realistically be forgiven by God in 12 minutes even?
There is no sin that God can forgive us without the intercession of Jesus anyway…
But if that were the case we would have a totally unwieldy workload when we get to be old and frail, we would need to have an equally totally fantastic memory just to remember to ask for every forgiveness. I don’t think Jesus meant we are to ask his forgiveness 70 times 7 for our own sins. Rather, I think that for a born again Christian we need to ask once.for cleansing and forgiveness. Just once. Any more asking is relative to our faith and belief not being in the right place.
Asking God twice for forgiveness is akin to asking him every day for the rest of our lives.
So isn’t it just the most marvellous thing, that Jesus took on himself the punishment for each and every one of our 2,920,000 sins not counting leap years, since we were 10 years old and all we have to do in comparison is next to nothing. Such is the gift of the grace of God.
I like to think that a good answer when someone asks “how are you today?” would be to say , “ I am as pure as the driven snow, I am whiter than white, I am as pure as a holy sepulchre”
Of course we are, that is what Gods forgiveness does. But it does sound a bit ‘holier than thou’, does it not? And it doesn’t really address the concept of humility that we are born (again) with.
But it is true, and like Mary, we can keep these things in our hearts.
So we need to think about the prayer of Jesus. It was relevant. It was short, and it didn’t repeat. And it put some responsibility back on us, “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors”. This spoken to a true Jewish transactional mindset society. Usurers . But what does it say for us? We might be tempted to say , oh that means Spiritual debtors, right? That’s usually a good escape. But, maybe not, I leave it to you.
I believe that the Holy Spirit is for living with. I don’t believe it is irreverent or sinful to enjoy the salvation of Jesus. And I believe if I can help you to enjoy both salvation and help you save up to 12 hours a day, then it was worth writing this essay.
Don’t forget to pray. It doesn’t take that long… …but that reminds me, how long do you really think it would take, say every day over 80 years from when we are 10 years old until we are 90 or so, to be truly thankful to God and Jesus for all that has been given us? Even the earth is a beautiful place. Now that reminds me...so is a comfy bed. Not everyone has the privilege. Please tell me if the math is wrong....tomorrow.
So the dog says, there are 12 x 60 x 60 seconds in 12 hours = 43200.
But at age 90 we have 2,920,000 sins to deal with daily, and going up.
The dog says that is 67.6 deals per second I will have to deal with…
The dog says it is fortunate for him
,a) that he wont live to 90, and
b) that dogs don’t have a soul. He says I told him that when he stole the Sunday roast that time.
He says it is fortunate having the forgive and forget syndrome because it , like sort of, makes us equal. He figures now, we can both go and chase the cat up the tree.
Except, I don’t want to anymore.
Now I wonder why that would be?
I am sure now I am totally confused, I think another way to handle this is to stop sinning altogether. Say, how do you do that?
The dog, Ross’s dog, he doesn’t care. He’s just fallen. He’s out of his tree big time.
The dog, we have talked about Ross’s dog before, is concerned
He says that in the essay we did last night on forgiveness, basically, that the math is wrong.
He says he tossed and turned most of the night trying to figure it out, because I had taken the calculator.
This is what we had last night…
We pray too much…. 09.04.06
I wonder if we are prepared for God to answer our prayers?
Lets suppose we pray for “thy kingdom come”. Are we sure we can handle that? Maybe we pray for world peace, are we ready for that?
Perhaps we pray for Israel… are we ready in our hearts for that too? Imagine the fallout amongst the Christians and Muslims….
And say, today we ask for forgiveness for our sins, tomorrow are we going to ask to be forgiven the same sin? As well as tomorrows sins. And then the next day, and so on. At the end of a year, suppose we were conscious of say, just 10 sins a day, that would be 3,650 sins.
After 10 years, that is, 10 x 365 x 10 = 36500 sins. After 50 years, that is 182500. Not counting leap days. But if we sin 100 times a day on average, and who wouldn’t? That would be 1,825,000 sins to remember when we pray for forgiveness. At that stage we are,
like 60 years old. Just a pup. By the time we are 90 we have to pray for forgiveness for another 30 years worth, like 1,095,000. And my mum is 94 not out as we speak…. And she forgets what she has already said, so, big problem huh?
That adds up to 2,920,000 sins to be forgiven if we just sinned 100 times a day.
Then what if we forgot to beg forgiveness for some of them? More sinning.
But, being a clever people, enlightened, educated, suppose that in begging forgiveness, we get so efficient that we can do one sin-beg every minute, there are 60 x 24 = 1440 minutes in a 24 hour period.
Suppose though that because we are old, we need sleep, we need to eat etc, that we can only pray 12 hours a day, then we might get through 720 sin-begs a day.
720 x 365 x 80 = 21,024,000.
In that case, assuming God would hear one a minute, we could possibly get in front. But if your sins are like my sins, maybe we need more than 1 minute. We break even at 12 minutes . What sin could realistically be forgiven by God in 12 minutes even?
There is no sin that God can forgive us without the intercession of Jesus anyway…
But if that were the case we would have a totally unwieldy workload when we get to be old and frail, we would need to have an equally totally fantastic memory just to remember to ask for every forgiveness. I don’t think Jesus meant we are to ask his forgiveness 70 times 7 for our own sins. Rather, I think that for a born again Christian we need to ask once.for cleansing and forgiveness. Just once. Any more asking is relative to our faith and belief not being in the right place.
Asking God twice for forgiveness is akin to asking him every day for the rest of our lives.
So isn’t it just the most marvellous thing, that Jesus took on himself the punishment for each and every one of our 2,920,000 sins not counting leap years, since we were 10 years old and all we have to do in comparison is next to nothing. Such is the gift of the grace of God.
I like to think that a good answer when someone asks “how are you today?” would be to say , “ I am as pure as the driven snow, I am whiter than white, I am as pure as a holy sepulchre”
Of course we are, that is what Gods forgiveness does. But it does sound a bit ‘holier than thou’, does it not? And it doesn’t really address the concept of humility that we are born (again) with.
But it is true, and like Mary, we can keep these things in our hearts.
So we need to think about the prayer of Jesus. It was relevant. It was short, and it didn’t repeat. And it put some responsibility back on us, “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors”. This spoken to a true Jewish transactional mindset society. Usurers . But what does it say for us? We might be tempted to say , oh that means Spiritual debtors, right? That’s usually a good escape. But, maybe not, I leave it to you.
I believe that the Holy Spirit is for living with. I don’t believe it is irreverent or sinful to enjoy the salvation of Jesus. And I believe if I can help you to enjoy both salvation and help you save up to 12 hours a day, then it was worth writing this essay.
Don’t forget to pray. It doesn’t take that long… …but that reminds me, how long do you really think it would take, say every day over 80 years from when we are 10 years old until we are 90 or so, to be truly thankful to God and Jesus for all that has been given us? Even the earth is a beautiful place. Now that reminds me...so is a comfy bed. Not everyone has the privilege. Please tell me if the math is wrong....tomorrow.
So the dog says, there are 12 x 60 x 60 seconds in 12 hours = 43200.
But at age 90 we have 2,920,000 sins to deal with daily, and going up.
The dog says that is 67.6 deals per second I will have to deal with…
The dog says it is fortunate for him
,a) that he wont live to 90, and
b) that dogs don’t have a soul. He says I told him that when he stole the Sunday roast that time.
He says it is fortunate having the forgive and forget syndrome because it , like sort of, makes us equal. He figures now, we can both go and chase the cat up the tree.
Except, I don’t want to anymore.
Now I wonder why that would be?
I am sure now I am totally confused, I think another way to handle this is to stop sinning altogether. Say, how do you do that?
The dog, Ross’s dog, he doesn’t care. He’s just fallen. He’s out of his tree big time.
posted by Ross at 9:32 pm
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