Free Abba's Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging by Brennan Manning Page B

seeking authority in order to influence others is the way to become like God. If God is perceived as immutable and invulnerable, granite-like consistency and a high threshold for pain is the way of godliness.
    The life of Jesus suggests that to be like Abba is to show compassion. Donald Gray expresses it like this: “Jesus reveals in an exceptionally human life what it is to live a divine life, a compassionate life.” [6]
    Scripture points to an intimate connection between compassion and forgiveness. According to Jesus, a distinctive sign of Abba’s childis the willingness to forgive our enemies: “Love your enemies and do good . . . and you will be sons of the Most High, for he himself is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked” (Luke 6:35). In the Lord’s Prayer we acknowledge the primary characteristic of Abba’s children when we pray, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Jesus presents His Abba as the model for our forgiveness: the king in Matthew 18 who forgives a fantastic sum, an unpayable debt   —the God who forgives without limit (the meaning of seventy times seven).
    God calls His children to a countercultural lifestyle of forgiveness in a world that demands an eye for an eye   —and worse. But if loving God is the first commandment, and loving our neighbor proves our love for God, and if it is easy to love those who love us, then loving our enemies must be the filial badge that identifies Abba’s children.
    The summons to live as forgiven and forgiving children is radically inclusive. It is addressed not only to the wife whose husband forgot their wedding anniversary but also to parents whose child was slaughtered by a drunken driver, to the victims of slanderous accusations and to the poor living in filthy boxes who see the rich drive by in Mercedes, to the sexually molested and to spouses shamed by the unfaithfulness of their partners, to believers who have been terrorized with blasphemous images of an unbiblical deity and to the mother in El Salvador whose daughter’s body was returned to her horribly butchered, to elderly couples who lost all their savings because their bankers were thieves and to the woman whose alcoholic husband squandered their inheritance, and to those who are objects of ridicule, discrimination, and prejudice.
    The demands of forgiveness are so daunting that they seem humanly impossible. The demands of forgiveness are simply beyond the capacity of ungraced human will. Only reckless confidence in a Source greater than ourselves can empower us to forgive the wounds inflicted by others. In boundary moments such as these there is only one place to go   —Calvary.
    Stay there for a long time and watch as Abba’s Only Begotten dies utterly alone in bloody disgrace. Watch as He breathes forgiveness onHis torturers at the moment of their greatest cruelty and mercilessness. On that lonely hill outside the city wall of old Jerusalem, you will experience the healing power of the dying Lord.
    Experientially, the inner healing of the heart is seldom a sudden catharsis or an instant liberation from bitterness, anger, resentment, and hatred. More often it is a gentle growing into oneness with the Crucified who has achieved our peace through His blood on the cross. This may take considerable time because the memories are still so vivid and the hurt is still so deep. But it will happen. The crucified Christ is not merely a heroic example to the church: He is the power and wisdom of God, a living force in His present risenness, transforming our lives and enabling us to extend the hand of reconciliation to our enemies.
    Understanding triggers the compassion that makes forgiveness possible. Author Stephen Covey recalled an incident while riding the New York City subway one Sunday morning. The few passengers aboard were reading the newspaper or dozing. It was a quiet, almost somnolent ride through the bowels of the Big Apple. Covey was engrossed in