“And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” We often think of forgiveness as a blank check to cover all of our debts, no questions asked, or a golden parachute with which we can safely make a soft landing when everything is about to come crashing down. That's it? We might ask. We just say a prayer, ask for forgiveness, and we have a clean slate? It might almost feel like a loophole. We just do what we want, whenever we want, and when we start to feel bad, we just ask for forgiveness so the bad feeling goes away and then we can get back to doing whatever we want again. Forgiveness, at least, the Lord's forgiveness, is not the easy way out. It is not a get out of jail free card. It is not our Heavenly Father paying our Karmic credit card bills. When Heavenly Father forgives us our debts, He does so by turning us into, spiritually speaking, financially literate and fiscally responsible and above all wise stewards of the time, talents, abilities, and desires with which the Lord has blessed us. God does not throw good money after bad. He will not let one of His stewards run amok with His checkbook. If He finds that we have been squandering our time and our energy on pointless and dangerous pursuits, He will forgive us if we ask Him, but we had better know just what it is we are asking for. His forgiveness will require us to clean up our act, sacrifice temporary pleasures and instantaneous gratification for long term investments that will pay dividends far more rewarding than anything we might be tempted to go into debt for at the present moment. If we will follow the financial plan that He lays out for us, we will not only no longer run up big deficits with nothing to show for it except a hole in our pockets and an even bigger hole in our hearts, but we will also be transformed from a net loss into stewards that actually generate wealth and treasures in Heaven. Our Father wants to give us all that He has, but first we have to show that we can be faithful over a few things. If we are only praying to God to bail us out of the next immediate crisis for which we have only ourselves to blame, then we are only asking for the most shallow and basic firm of forgiveness. It is a selfish and small minded forgiveness and it will eat at our souls because we know that we were not made merely to rack up debts and contribute nothing of value. To ask for true forgiveness is to tell our Father that we are ready to step up our game, that we have a vision and a mission statement for our lives, and all we need is a little help from an angel investor to give us some seed money and some mentoring to really show our Heavenly Father what we can really do with the time, talents, energy, and desires with which He has entrusted us and which He expects us to cultivate and multiply.
