Yesterday (26th May) was Australian National Sorry Day. Only having been in Australia for 4 weeks now, I haven’t gone into the details, but based on the little I understand, it’s a day set aside whereby Australia acknowledges and expresses remorse over it’s historical mistreatment of the indigenous people of the country.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Sorry_Day). I got thinking about “SORRY”!
“SORRY” is one of the first words a child learns, or at least it was one of my first. Used as an attempt – even though a futile one in most cases – to avert a good warming of my posterior by Dad, after acting up. “SORRY”– a word I used at various times in various work settings. Being responsible for breaking my mum’s favourite vase as a child or being responsible for a reduction in separation between two planes as an Air Traffic Controller. Mistakes with very different weightiness and consequences- yet each covered by the same word – “SORRY”!
I remember a time in my life when I was going through one storm after another. I had no “SORRIES” left to say. It seemed the abyss of apologies had dried up together with the watery well of weeping! It seemed there was no end to apologizing, but there was!
Friend, there’s a season to say “SORRY”; and during such season, that “SORRY” needs to be said loudly and clearly, undiluted and unclouded. But that sorrowful song cannot continue ad infinitum. That series of sorries has to reach its terminal point; a cul-de-sac. One of two strangers will be standing at the end of that road to meet that “SORRY”. It will be either a dear friend called “FORGIVENESS”. Otherwise it will be the unrelenting, unwilling urchin named “UNFORGIVENESS”. Irrespective which of these entities meet you at the end of that sorry, the SORRY itself can go no further!
The Prodigal Son – Luke 15 (in the Bible)- after wasting his Father’s wealth in the distant country, makes his way back home with a heart filled with sorries. There at the end of that dusty dirt road, the son’s SORRY meets with daddy’s FORGIVENESS.
Friend, on this National Sorry Day, while the sorry of the nation will continue for years to come, your “SORRY” can find it’s terminal point, it’s end in the loving arms of the Heavenly Father’s FORGIVENESS! It may not be a “SORRY” for racism, it may not be a “SORRY” for mistreating others. However, whatever the nature or cause of that “SORRY” may be, it need not continue further than right now! RECEIVE GOD’S FORGIVENESS; FORGIVE OTHERS; FORGIVE YOURSELF! MOVE FORWARD IN VICTORY!!