03.20.07

Forgiveness / Reconciliation

Posted in Uncategorized at 5:10 pm by Greg England

In 1985, I moved my wife, three month old daughter, and three and a half year old son from north Alabama to central Florida. We were starting a new life in many ways. Moving away from all family was a tough decision. Moving to a more expensive economy took some faith. Starting my first fulltime work as a minister was filled with anxiety.

The good side of the story is that I would be co-ministering with a man who had been a family friend since I was a baby and had been my parent’s best friend years earlier. We would work together for a year, then he was planning on retiring and I would be the fulltime minister. It was a good church. Good location. Good opportunity. Good community in which to raise a family.

The first year things could not have been better! Then came year two. He retired, but he didn’t stop preaching. So he would preach a Sunday and I would preach a Sunday, giving me no opportunity to have any continuity in my teaching. More Sundays than I care to remember, I would see him in his office between Sunday School and the assembly with 2 or 3 yellowed outlines on his desk … he was trying to decide which old sermon to preach that morning! We nicknamed him "Old Yellow" because this happened so often. Needless to say, the sermons were anything but inspiring.

Eventually I got the elders to agree to let me speak three Sundays and he could have the fourth (and fifth when a month had five Sundays) Sunday to preach. That at least gave me some continuity in preaching, but it was never a good situation. All we were doing was polarizing the congregation and stagnating any growth. But since his son was the Elder #1. His best friend was Elder #2. And #2’s son-in-law was Elder #3, what could I do? It was a stacked deck.

After seven years, I decided to leave. The straw that broke my will was the Sunday I preached and he got up the following Sunday and preached a new sermon. A rebuttal to my sermon the week before! In time (though not soon enough), we relocated to California and I went through the Pepperdine University School of Law conflict resolution and mediation course. Upon completing that excellent training, I knew I had to go back to Florida and work through the process of forgiving and being reconciled. I dreaded it, but I knew I could never move much further emotionally until I could shed this baggage from my heart.

We took a couple of weeks that summer to go back to Alabama and Florida. I met with the other preacher and his wife. A very tearful meeting, but one that ended in forgiveness being extended and accepted all around. Finally, almost 10 years of estrangement were behind us. We were truly friends once more. I met with the elders and we parted friends.

Not long after that visit, the preacher and his best friend were fishing in the Indian River that separates the mainland from Merrit Island and Cocoa Beach. Actually, it’s not a river at all, but a lagoon. For the most part, you can walk across the channel between the mainland and Merrit Island. Hardly does the water reach a depth of more than 5 feet. But when a storm comes up, and they are often and ferocious, those shallow waters can become a death trap. I was out in a small boat once with a friend from the police department when he told me to stick my paddle in the water and touch the bottom. It was less than four feet deep. He then told me, "Greg, you would not believe how many people have died in this shallow." I asked him how in the world a person can drown in water so shallow. He replied, "Storms."

That morning, as they were fishing, a storm came up and their boat capsized. The motor came off the boat and my friend went under to retrieve it. In the process, he thought he’d had a heart attack. His chest was hurting so badly. In reality, while under water he literally drowned (so the autopsy later proved). He died in his friend’s arms and was tied to the boat while his friend swam to shore to get help. They found the body over a week later, and only then with the use of some high tech imaging equipment donated by NASA. He was barely recognizable after the damage of being in the water and being fed upon by marine life.

To this day, hard as it was, I’ve always been very grateful to God to have given me the opportunity to go and be reconciled to my brothers. Had I put it off, that horrific death would have forever sealed a bad relationship and a much needed forgiveness and reconciliation.

So … who in your life do you need to go and either seek forgiveness or grant forgiveness?

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