After Job forgave his friends and prayed on their behalf, God restored his fortunes. What good gifts of God do we fail to receive because we fail to forgive and pray for those who wound us? 

Those of us who have been forgiven so much should lead the world in extending forgiveness to others.

Those of us who have been shaped by the intercession of others should kneel in intercession daily.

Those of us who earnestly desire God’s best gifts should learn to see all things, including unnecessary pain and suffering, through the eyes of faith and a heart of complete trust in God, even when we cannot comprehend every Why?

Forgiveness unties the knots of our lives. 

Intercession focuses God’s favor on others who are as undeserving as us.

Pain and suffering are God’s megaphone, as C. S. Lewis says, inviting us to hear the greater reality, the Deeper Magic (again, Lewis), of God’s good grace, mercy, and kindness. 

There is another side to every season of loss. There are realities we cannot see as surely as what we do perceive. There is more than we can now know at work within us, around us, and for us. Our God is a God of restoration and renewal. 

God’s Greater Yes looms large over what we consider our final end. His affirmation consumes every negation. 

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I will bow in forgiveness and kneel in intercession.

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Our Father, my gratitude for your immense and continuing forgiveness is expressed in leading with the kindness of forgiveness and the habit of intercession. Use me in whatever manner you see fit to exercise your work of restoration and renewal in the lives of others. Amen.