“….accepting one another and forgiving one another if anyone has a complaint against another. Just as the Lord has forgiven you, so also you must forgive” (Colossians 3:13).
For reasons I never fully understood the old gentleman carried around a load of bitterness, much of it directed toward me his pastor. In a business conference when we were discussing calling a young man as our youth director, the old man stood and poured out venom on the proceedings. He was clearly angry about something, all out of proportion to what we were discussing.
“I have no idea what it is between you and him,” said a man in his Sunday School class. “Actually,” he continued, “he’s a good teacher. I like him.”
I knew a little of what had happened. A year earlier, the gentleman was convinced that I had not spoken to him and his wife at a church function. “You talked to everyone there except us.” I was completely unaware of this and apologized, then drove across the city to his home and apologized to his wife. A sweet lady, she said it was nothing, that her husband was just being himself.
The man never turned it loose. He now had a license to be angry at his preacher.