The Uttermost Farthing

"Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art in the way with him; lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison. Verily I say unto thee, Thou shalt by no means come out thence, till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing." (Matthew 5:25-26). A lot of us will keep detailed legers of all of the offenses and slights and abuses that have accrued against us. We know the precise total emotional debt of each person who has wronged us, down to the uttermost farthing. The problem is, everyone else has their own detailed account books of every last farthing's worth of pain and insult and neglect that we have inflicted upon them. But the worst part of this is that these debts of resentment are subject to predatory interest rates. Maybe the debt started with something tiny - they cut in front of us in line, or didn't return our friendly good morning, or left the toilet seat up, or drank all of the orange juice and then put the empty container back in the fridge instead of throwing it away. But if we don't quickly forgive their offense, every time we see them, or think about orange juice, or stand in a line, we remember that farthing's worth of anger, and the interest compounds. In no time at all, that single farthing has ballooned into a massive debt. And it gets bigger all the time. As Jesus says, we get locked into this prison of our own making and we are completely and utterly trapped, because now virtually everything reminds us of all the ways that we have been wronged. A prison is still a prison whether it's made from bars of gold or bars of iron. The only way out is for us to forgive. It doesn't matter if it's a single farthing or a hundred pence or ten thousand talents, we have to forgive it all, down to the uttermost farthing if we ever want to get out of this prison of resentment and anger. The truth is, we are often one hundred present justified in our anger. Sometimes the debt laid upon us is no small thing. Sometimes we have been wronged not because our adversary carelessly snubbed us but maliciously and hatefully went out of their way to abuse us. There is no excuse for what they did, and it is beyond our mortal capacity to forgive them. But we don't have to do this alone. When we have scooped out as many coins as we can, lugged as many ingots as we could carry, and our covered in a thousand paper cuts as we hauled out as much cash as we possibly could, but the vault still doesn't seem to be getting any emptier, that is when we let the Savior handle the rest. Jesus took on an infinite amount of debt. However incalculably vast the debts we are holding onto seem, Jesus has seen worse. But even after a divine intervention, even after the sweet release of complete and total forgiveness, we may be tempted to hold onto at least one farthing, just in case. What if we are the ones that mess up next time? Wouldn't it be good to hold onto just a little bit so we can balance the scales? But we don't get out of the prison until even the uttermost farthing is gone. Even after we've completely forgiven and let go, we're still going to rack up debts against them, and they're still going to rack up debts against us. But if we are committed to forgiving and agreeing with them quickly, then the debts don't have to keep piling up and up and up. If someone offends us, we can deal with it right in that moment, or we can lock it up in the vault, and before you know it, we've stacked up those bars of gold again so high that we're once again trapped in our gilded cage. Life's hard enough without keeping up with all of the compounding interest. Forgiveness may seem impossible, but living trapped in a prison of resentment is even worse. Let us all forgive quickly so we can go back to being free.