Reciprocation

“Give and it shall be given to you: pressed down, shaken together and running over.”  It’s a principle in scripture  I will pair it with a comment from my husband made in the mid 90s when I was struggling with some issues in my teaching career.  His comment was “At the end of the day, at the end of the year, what do you need to have accomplished; what do you have to walk away with?”

It’s hard to really consider that life is reciprocal.  Several years ago the Newsboys recorded a song with the line “The good I do goes nowhere.  The bad just seizes the day.”  While I identify with the song strongly on its premise that we concentrate on sin instead of love and grace as we should, that one line –though it reflects how we often feel, kind of sidetracks me.  On a post about a negative episode in a friend’s life, another friend commented ‘Karma, lol.’  The friend wasn’t really being mean, but it made me think about the way we interpret life.

When things are going great, we seldom consider reciprocation as a cause.  Yet when we read the verse above, we seldom consider negative actions or reactions as an outcome.  We concentrate on the future that will be bright if we are kind and giving and the ‘we’ is usually ‘you guys out there.’ 

A contact recently informed me how utterly despicable I am and basically that I’m going to get mine from God eventually and from that person in the present.  I won’t say I didn’t consider or pray about the accusation, but in the end grace is grace or it isn’t.  Forgiveness doesn’t exist unless you participate.  Peace will belong to the peaceable. 

That said there is a principle of reciprocation in both good and bad things.  Sometimes it doesn’t seem like it to the person who is behaving himself while being battered and bludgeoned, but in Psalms, Jeremiah, and Hebrews we are told to wait for it; it’s coming.  None of us are without sin.  If we claim we are, the first letter of John says we are deceived. And so a daily cry for forgiveness is in order.  If we find ourselves committing the same sin over and over, then both a cry for forgiveness and a careful consideration of what’s bringing that about is in order.

A person in my past brought repeated injury to me in unconscionable ways with never a request for forgiveness.  One day I was instructed by God to forgive regardless.  Yet this person’s behaviors caused repercussions that injured again and again and each time a new result was uncovered and the anger came I would again ask for grace to forgive and be done with it.  Eventually I realized I would never be done with it so how could I forgive in reality.  Then the same Spirit that instructed me to forgive taught me that forgiveness doesn’t depend on a lack of pain to be true.

There are those who assert that if a person still feels pain, they have not forgiven.  Some things will always cause pain and perhaps the acknowledgement with out vengeance is part of the healing of the soul.  As grace was extended to me, I must be willing that grace be extended to others regardless and that comes back to me in surprising ways.

Reverse thinking is a mark of growing, intelligent development.  If you can deconstruct a problem or a situation you can often find solutions or understanding.  And so you begin an honest backward trek to see how you arrived at this point ill equipped or unprepared.  But seldom do we begin a backward trek to see how we came to success and peace, perhaps because we don’t feel the need to fix success and peace or to avoid it in the future.  Yet perhaps the analyzing of the good in our lives would be as productive if we practiced it.

If you are angry all the time and feel that everything has worked against you, looking backward –deconstructing – may help you to get a handle on it.  Reverse thinking won’t add to your present situation, mind you.  But it can help you see what choices and mindsets may have led you to this point and what you can avoid in the future.  This process should be introspective.  You can’t fix other people.

One factor often overlooked and ignored is what you brought to the table that should have been left behind.  What we give that should be given we expect to be reciprocated.  What we gave that we should not have given, we seldom expect to be reciprocated.  But as the song says “The bad just seizes the day.” Most of the time “I’m sorry’ is all you have to give at that point.  Often “I’m sorry” is not respected and seldom changes the outcome of events set in motion.  If the other person is able to receive it, “I’m sorry” makes a big difference to both hearts.  But until then, it is moot.  What saying “I’m sorry” does is within the heart of the person who speaks it, whether or not it was accepted.  If you can make amends, it is the godly thing to do.  But sometimes you cannot and the result must be left to grace.  Likewise, to continue expecting another person to pay for a wrong in the past is harming yourself again and again and not really harming the other person regardless of your need to bring them down. 

One of the reasons for this is that the past is truly past.  I cannot walk backward in time and change one action of my own or someone else.  I cannot even walk backward in time and come to a pure judgment of another’s action and motive.  As a child I suffered some unthinkable things, but I’ve learned that there is a warp in years that alters our perception of an evil event.  I’m not saying that no offense really occurred.  But I have learned that it is part of the past for a reason.

So how does the law of reciprocation work here?  What have those who injured me experienced?  Was it adequate payment for the ill I received?  I don’t know but I do know about the other statement.  I know what I must take from it, what I must end up with for life and soundness.  Some of the best actions were not the obvious response once I looked at that first year of teaching.  The same is true today of more weighty matters.

So my conclusion:  behave yourself.  Don’t forget to be kind.  Serve your God and your people the best you can, knowing you will make mistakes.  God forgives.  I must forgive.  Other people may not forgive.  Who I am depends on me before God, not on other people –except as they pray and spur me on to God.  Good deeds done right walk quietly and, most of the time, slowly in this world.  Evil shrieks. Be patient and keep your eyes on the path.  The rest will come.