Grace Church
257 Kendall Street
Burlington, WI 53105

(262) 763-3021

How to Beat Bitterness Colossians 3:13 Dealing with Feelings Sermon Series Sermon #7 [Open with Film Clip from beginning of Forest Gump scene with Jenny throwing rocks at her old home.]   “Sometimes there just aren’t enough rocks....” When it comes to the fiery rage of bitterness there never will be enough rocks. One of the greatest challenges most of us face is to work at not surrendering to bitterness. We are all wounded, mistreated at some point in our lives. Everyone has to guard against bitterness creeping into their hearts. So many things in life have the potential of poisoning us. Unresolved family problems, marriage difficulties, rejection, past abuses, work conflicts, church troubles...the list is endless. All of these, if not dealt with, have the potential to become seeds of bitterness in our souls.   Your whole life and the lives of those around you will be contaminated. Each part of your life will be processed through this dirty filter. It will affect your thinking, emotions, your relationships with others and most importantly, your relationship with God. That’s why the writer of Hebrews warns, “Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many” (Heb. 12:14-15).   Everyone has known feelings of hurt, anger and bitterness. Life is filled with difficulties. We’ve all been mistreated, sometimes ignorantly, yet sometimes purposefully. Job said “man is born to trouble” (5:7). It is how you and I respond to these “troubles,” these mistreatments that will determine whether our lives will be poisoned by bitterness. And bitterness is enticing. Nursing feelings of bitterness can be very satisfying as a form of revenge. But the root of bitterness grows up. It cannot be hidden very long. Often you can see it on someone’s face. The bitter root will bear its ugly fruit. You may think that you can hide it – you can’t. Prov. 26:23-26 “Like a coating of glaze over earthenware are fervent lips with an evil heart. A malicious man disguises himself with his lips, but in his heart he harbors deceit. Though his speech is charming, do not believe him, for seven abominations fill his heart. His malice may be concealed by deception, but his wickedness will be exposed in the assembly.” An unforgiving, bitter spirit always bears fruit. It’s deadlier than Snow White’s apple. It poisons you and the ones that you love. Lewis Smedes observes “We make believe we are at peace while the furies rage within, beneath the surface. There, hidden, and suppressed, our hate opens the subterranean faucets of venom that will eventually infect all of our relationships in ways we cannot predict.”   Too many, believers included, are like the little boy who got into trouble and his mother put him into the closet...to think it over. And he began to spit on everything...his Mom’s dresses, his Dad’s suits, the shoes, the wall, even the light socket. After a while his Mom opened the door and asked, “What are you doing?” He replied, “I’m waiting on more spit.” “Sometimes there just aren’t enough rocks...”   Resentment is anger on slow boil. It leaves us in a continual state of anger. It prematurely ages and carves deep lines on our faces. It adds heaviness to our steps. It’s a horrible way to live. So, why – why do even believers choose to live with bitterness festering in their souls? Friend, you can beat bitterness. You don’t have to churn with unresolved rage...but you must choose to beat it. How can you and I beat bitterness?  1. What is bitterness? Bitterness is an irritated spirit; animosity; entrenched resentment; harsh, unloving opinions of others. It’s anger multiplied by time. The visible indicators of bitterness are refusing to forgive, resentment of my circumstances or the way that I have been treated, or an outgrowth of jealousy.    Please mark this down: Bitterness is anti-God. It is the antithesis of His love and forgiveness. It grows out of hurt feelings. An unforgiving spirit always turns into bitterness. It’s a sin and it is never justified in light of the Cross.      Dr. William Gaylin, in his book Feelings: Our Vital Signs, points out that "resentment often arises when we believe we aren't getting what is due us from another person. We feel unfairly cheated or betrayed. And brooding leads to all kinds of trouble."   The Greek word for bitter (pikros) originally meant sharp or pointed. It’s used about 40 times in the Greek Old Testament (the Septuagint) and seven times in the New Testament. This word was used to speak of a personal experience when something was unpleasant, undesirable, or when something bad was unexpected. In Scripture it refers to intensity of suffering of mind and body, something that is difficult to bear, something that causes animosity and reaction, something that is brought about by hatred or antagonism.   But our most picturesque Biblical word for bitterness is not pikros. It’s logizomai and we find it in a very surprising place but it’s placement here makes it all the more powerful. Turn to 1 Corinthians 13, the classic chapter on love. In verse 5 Paul writes “It is not rude, it is not self‑seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.” That phrase “keeps no record” is this word logizomai. Originally, it was a bookkeeping term. It literally meant “to calculate or reckon.” The 1st century CPA might be preparing for his taxes. He enters a tally into the ledger book, and he would calculate that he had a certain number of items. The word for this computation was logizomai.   Logizomai has to do with keeping a ledger, making an entry in permanent ink. Usually, this is a good thing. There are some things that we ought to always remember. But there are some records that should never be kept. Paul gives us one in Rom. 4:8 “Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will never count against him." Logizomai – The picture here is that God keeps a ledger book and you are truly blessed if God has no entries beside your name. If you’ve committed your life to Jesus Christ, His blood has washed the account of all of your sins clean. They’ve been blotted out completely!   2 Corinthians 5:19 says “God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them.” When we commit our lives to Christ, God no longer does logizomai. When you trusted Christ, God threw away His ledger book. Psalms 103:12 says “As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.” Notice that it does not say “as far as the north is from the south...” North and south is a measurable distance. The difference between east and west is an infinite distance. You and I deserve to have the book thrown at us, instead, God, through Christ Jesus, has thrown it away for us.   When it comes to your tax records, business papers and your household transactions – you need to keep good records. But when it comes to those transactions that we call relationships, we need to throw away the books. The practice of logizomai is deadly poison when it comes to husbands and wives, parents and children, pastors and people, friends and companions. Love, Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 13, keeps no books. It doesn’t have a scoreboard. Love remembers to forget.   The basis of all forgiveness is the Cross. If you are bitter and you cannot forgive, perhaps it is because you yourself have never been forgiven. You cannot forgive like Jesus because you’ve never really met Him.   The early church father, Chrysostom, once said that a wrong done against love is like a spark that falls into the sea and is quenched. Bitterness douses the flames of life and love. It keeps records. It enshrines failure and evil. It lets no one else forget. And it is devilish! 2. Bitterness is common. Tragically, bitterness is common...even in the Church. People are often more willing to admit to sexual sin than they are to own up to bitterness. They’ll deny it or rationalize it, but somehow it keeps surfacing. Their negative attitude toward another individual is apparent. They continually look for the bad or they portray every action in a negative light. They may even dress up their bitterness is Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes and make it sound really religious, even package it as a prayer request. But God knows their heart and they’re not fooling Him. God knows that their heart is filled with the poison of bitterness.   Part of our self-delusion is our failure to understand that there are really two types of anger: hot and cold. While hot anger is explosive and loud. Cold anger is more subtle. It usually evidences itself through criticizing or complaining. It will often just grouse about the other person, though it might plot or scheme. Cold anger is usually more destructive than hot anger. It erodes fellowship, reputations and relationships instead of blasting them away. But it is more dangerous because it is so subtle.   Scripture has several examples of bitterness: women are bitter because they cannot have children (1 Sam. 1:10); a foolish son is bitterness to his parents (Prov. 17:25); slavery causes bitterness (Ex. 1:14); suffering and ridicule cause bitterness (Deut. 32:24, Lam. 3:14); Pride causes bitterness (Acts 8:23).   There are Four Relationships though where I believe that you will find bitterness more commonly than anywhere else. Colossians 3:19 alludes to one, “Husbands, love your wives and do not be embittered against them.”   Why would marriage be a place of bitterness? I believe that marriage is too often an arena of bitterness because it does not live up to our expectations. Most of us enter marriage idealistic. The reason these Four Relationships are more likely to be consumed by bitterness is that we are idealistic rather than realistic in each of these. When reality does not match our imagined picture, we become resentful.   A. Parents. It was front page headlines some years ago when Patti Davis, the daughter of Ronald and Nancy Reagan, posed for Playboy. It had nothing to do with artistic expression and it wasn’t for the money (she donated what she was paid to PETA). It was bitterness. In fact, at 24, Patti Davis had bragged that she had had a tubal ligation saying that she didn’t want to risk passing on her mother’s gene pool. Why did Joseph’s brothers sell him as a slave? They were bitter at Daddy Jacob. Why did Absalom incite a revolution? He was bitter at his father, King David.   My own father lived a life filled with bitterness at his own father. I can hardly remember him saying a kind thing about his own father. Sadly, we as his children paid a high price for his unresolved bitterness. You see, we have this picture that our parents should be Ward and June Cleaver. But they’re not and neither are we. We’re all sinners. While it is true that some parents seem to do worse than others, most of them did the best that they could with the tools that they had. To be bitter only hurts us and eventually our own children.  Parents are sinners and have sinnerlings who in turn have grand-sinnerlings.   B. Partners. Someone said, “In a sense, the person we marry is a stranger about whom we have a magnificent hunch.” Most of us read too many fairy tales when it comes to marriage. Marriage is not a chick-flick. You don’t always live happily ever after. It’s a lot of work. When marriage  does not live up to our expectations, as Paul alludes to in Colossians 3:19, we are tempted to become bitter.   C. Posterity. Everyone loves a baby, it’s kids that drive them crazy. “Parents spend the first part of a child's life urging him to walk and talk, and the rest of his childhood making him sit down and keep quiet.” Someone said, “Adolescence is a series of rapid changes. Between the ages of 12 and 17, for example, a child may see his parents age 20 years.”   Remember before you were a parent , you’d see another couple struggling with their child. And you gave each other the look. You know the one – “We’ll never do that when we have kids.” But you did. We tend to think of kids as Cabbage Patch Dolls. We picture The Brady Bunch but too often it’s like The Simpsons. And that child that we’ve done so much for, scrimped and saved for, given up sleep for, broken our neck for – isn’t grateful or worse – treats us like dirt. When that happens, bitterness sows its ugly seed. And Satan laughs in delight – because he’s won.   D. Pastors. This one may surprise you. Somehow though we have this picture that pastors walk on water, but they don’t. I don’t know how many folk I’ve talked to over the years who have seething bitterness toward some man of God from years gone by. He pulled a boner. He was carnal. Some have committed gross sin. But this person is still seething, many of them have left the church, never to return.   I have a dear friend. Probably at least five times now he’s shared the story with me of his pastor who pulled a political power play so that though a committee had been chosen to pick the colors for their new building, the pastor still got his way. The pastor wanted red hymnals. The committee had picked another color. But sure enough, on opening day of the new building, the pews were filled with red hymnals.   Pastors do need to live godly lives (just as parents, partners and children should). Both Timothy and Titus allude to this truth. Yet pastors are also sinners saved by grace. Don’t let even a pastor rob you of your joy and peace! God and His grace is so much bigger than that!   When I was in Danville, IL a number of years ago, one of the area churches had a “Come Clean” Service. One of those where you air all of your dirty laundry. Some of the folk got convicted about their bitterness toward the pastor. I’m not sure how serious it was or how big the offenses were. But I do know that a very long line of people went to see the pastor to make things right. And soon after that the pastor resigned and went to another church. He could not handle that while he was trying to do the right thing, he had offended so many people...people who had told him Sunday after Sunday that they loved him and appreciated him. It was more than he could bear.   I’ve been here fifteen years and I know Scott Carson probably better than anyone else in this room. It would not surprise me if I have offended every one of you at some time or another (and if I haven’t, give me time). My point is this, please don’t let me or some other human tool of God drive a wedge between you and God. Don’t let us keep you from having the joy and peace that Jesus Christ purchased with His own blood on Calvary! God is so much bigger than that!! 3. Bitterness is costly. During World War II the U.S. submarine Tang surfaced under the cover of darkness to fire upon a large Japanese convoy off the coast of China. Since previous raids had left the American vessel with only eight torpedoes, the accuracy of every shot was absolutely essential. The first seven missiles were right on target; but when the eighth was launched, it suddenly deviated and headed right back at their own ship. The emergency alarm to submerge rang out, but it was too late. Within a matter of seconds, the U.S. sub received a direct hit and sank almost instantly. In much the same way we can destroy ourselves by bitterness toward others. The effects of holding a grudge are very serious. Modern medicine has shown that emotions like bitterness and anger can cause problems such as headaches, backaches, allergic disorders, ulcers, high blood pressure, and heart attacks, to name just a few. When we do not forgive, when we do not obey Scripture and love our enemies but strike back at them, we are also assuming God's responsibility to mete out justice. Romans 12:19 says, “‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay, says the Lord.” By clinging to bitterness and an unforgiving spirit, we primarily inflict great harm on ourselves. It keeps us from enjoying the present and keeps us chained to the past.   Malachy McCourt insightfully said, “Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die.” Bitterness costs its carrier the most. It erodes our peace and robs us of joy. Would you let a thief work for you? Live in your house? Then, why do you let bitterness reside in your soul? Poet Stephen Crane potently describes it: In the desert I saw a creature, naked, bestial, Who, squatting upon the ground, Held his heart in his hands, And ate of it. I said: “Is it good, friend?” “It is bitter‑bitter,” he answered; “But I like it Because it is bitter, And because it is my heart.”          When we are bitter, we are eating our own soul. Add to that bitter people are often friendless. They hard to be around. Their bitterness oozes to the surface, quickly contaminating relationships. One feels like one is walking on egg shells around them, never knowing what might set them off.   But bitterness takes its highest toll on us spiritually. When a believer is bitter, there is a loss of close fellowship with the Lord. How can one be close to a loving, forgiving God when one is unforgiving, resentful and nursing a grudge? Peter  (1 Pet. 1:22-2:1) indicates that bitterness impedes our spiritual growth and sanctification. Bitterness can cost us eternally with the loss of rewards. Bitterness is a devastating mental attitude sin, and it triggers a wide range of other sins, such as: hatred, cruelty, antagonism, self‑pity, unteachableness, stubbornness, vindictiveness and desire for revenge, prideful ambition and arrogance. No wonder D. L. Moody wrote: “I believe [unforgiveness] is keeping more people from having power with God than any other thing ‑‑ they are not willing to cultivate the spirit of forgiveness. If we allow the root of bitterness to spring up in our hearts against someone, our prayer will not be answered. It may not be an easy thing to live in sweet fellowship with all those with whom we come in contact; but that is what the grace of God is given to us for."   Bitterness also hurts the Body. You can’t hold a grudge and keep it to yourself. We’ve got to tell somebody the wrong that has been done to us. Usually, we tell it again and again and again. Just as crab grass will spread and take over a lawn, one seed of bitterness that is nourished, maintained and kept alive will spread. It will send out its shoots or roots, and defile many – sometimes a whole church. The greatest danger to our church is not defection from doctrine or denial of the Fundamentals of the Faith, the greatest danger is misuse of the tongue. Bitter believers sowing poison throughout the Body.   So, why do people harbor something so harmful and destructive? Obviously, one reason is the deception of sin. We are deceived and believe that we are enjoying it and cannot give it up. Some experts though have suggested another very interesting reason. Bitterness is often the domain of the insecure. People who have a poor self-image will often cling to bitterness, believing somehow that it makes the other person lower and them superior. It seems that people who tend to think little of themselves are the ones who gravitate toward resentment, for it gives them a way – an unhealthy way – to place themselves a little higher in the pecking order. And in every internal mental rehearsal, the offender becomes more evil and the offended more innocent and righteous. The fantasies of bitterness often bring about some neurotic pleasure and even religious pride. It puts the bitter person in the judge’s seat, and makes them jury and executioner too. In our own minds we are high and mighty. But we’re deluded. God is the one and only Judge. Sadly, clinging to bitterness is not only destructive but it speaks volumes about our own insecurities and our lack of spiritual maturity. 4. Bitterness is curable. Amy Carmichael poured her life out as a missionary to India. She was one of the greatest deeper life writers in this century. She went Home to be with the Lord in the 1950’s and wrote this, “If I say, Yes I forgive, but cannot forget, as though the God, who twice a day washes all the sands on all the shores of all the world, could not wash such memories from my mind, then I know nothing of Calvary love.” Bitterness is curable. But you have to take the medicine.   A. You cannot forgive, unless you have been forgiven. Colossians 3:13 “Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.” The key is that phrase, “Forgive as the Lord forgave you.” Ephesians 4:32 says, “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.” I believe that it is very hard to forgive if you yourself have not been forgiven. If you’ve never committed your life to Christ, if you’ve never come to the Cross and accepted Christ’s payment for all for your filthy sin – then it will be difficult for you to forgive someone else because you have not personally experienced forgiveness. God’s forgiveness is the standard for our forgiveness of others. There is a wonderful parable in Matthew 18:21-35 about forgiveness. The point of the parable is this, if you cannot forgive, then you have not been forgiven. When I consider the phenomenal debt that God in His love forgave me for at Calvary, how dare I not forgive the trivial stuff that others have done to me on this earth.   Some of you are saying “Scott, you don’t know what’s been done to me?” That’s true but you probably don’t know what’s been done to me. When I was ten my mother was killed in a tragic car accident. My father was a prescription drug addict and continually abused my mother. He was so cruel to her that she often wept. He drove a brand new car but had not maintained her car. The power steering fluid and power brake fluid had leaked out of her car and in a rain storm, she lost control of her car and went down a 75' embankment and was instantly killed. I hated him. He was a cruel man. He was vicious to her and his children. But when I was fifteen I was confronted with the truth of Ephesians 4:32. And as a young man, when I fully realized how much my wonderful God had forgiven me for it became very easy to forgive my father.    Forgiveness is not selective. It begins and ends at the Cross. As I truly realize how much God loves me and has forgiven me, how can I dare be bitter at someone else and not forgive them. And I am to offer the same type of forgiveness that God has given me at the Cross – forgiveness that is unearned and forgiveness without guarantees. How many times do we tell someone, “I’ll forgive you as long as it doesn’t happen again.” I’m so glad that God does not “forgive” like that or none of us would be forgiven.   General James Oglethorpe, the founder of the Georgia Colony, once said to John Wesley, "I never forgive and I never forget." To which Wesley responded, "Then Sir, I hope you never sin." Friend, if you have never sinned then you do not need to forgive...but you have and I have.   B. Confess bitterness as sin. Ephesians 4:31 says, “Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice.” We must confess bitterness as a sin against God. We who have been forgiven so much must also forgive. To be bitter and to be unforgiving is a sin against the grace of God.   C. Control your thought life. Our greatest spiritual battles are fought in our minds, “take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5). C. S. Lewis put it this way: “We find that the work of forgiveness has to be done over and over again. We, forgive, we mortify our resentment; a week later some chain of thought carries us back to the original offence and we discover the old resentment blazing away as if nothing had been done about it at all. We need to forgive our brother seventy times seven not only for 490 offenses but for one offence.”   D. Trust in the goodness of God. James 1:2-4 says, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” Even in the midst of terrible suffering and mistreatment, God is still in control. Trials and suffering push us upward toward Christlikeness. It produces spiritual fruit in our lives. James is not saying that everything in this life is right or will even turn out okay. His emphasis though is on the eternal, not the temporal. Regardless of our suffering or persecution or pain, our loving Heavenly Father is in control and will use it for our ultimate good. Whatever your situation, your Heavenly Father has allowed it and will use it for your good and His glory. I don’t care if the problem is your parents, your partner, your pastor or even your posterity. Please do not succumb to bitterness, instead trust in the goodness of God.   E. Trust in the justice of God. An essential yet often overlooked element in battling bitterness is to trust that God's justice will prevail. One cause of bitterness is the feeling that you have been wronged by someone. They have lied about you, or stolen from you, or been unfaithful to you, or let you down, or rejected you. You have this feeling not only that you should not have been hurt, but that they should be punished. You may be right. In feeling righteous you dwell on the injustice of it. You go over it again and again in your mind, and it chews at your insides. You think of things you might say to put them in their place. You think of things you could do to show others their true colors. God is not pleased by this bitterness. The reason He's not is because it comes from unbelief in the certainty that God's justice will prevail. Rom. 12:19 says, “Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ says the Lord.” What this text says is that God has made a promise that He Himself will repay all wrongs in perfect measure. His justice will prevail. No wrong has escaped His notice. He sees its evil far better than you do. He hates it far more than you do. And He claims the right to take vengeance. Friend, leave it with God...leave it in the courts of heaven. The battle against bitterness and vengeance is a battle against unbelief in the promise of God to vindicate us in due time and to make justice prevail (Psalm 37:6). No one was wronged worse than Jesus but Scripture tells us that He returned good for evil. Jesus did it the same way that we do it, He trusted in the ultimate justice of God. Conclusion: Friend, forgiveness is something good that you do for yourself.  If you have bitterness in your heart, confess it to God. Forgive as you have been forgiven. Perhaps there is someone that you need to go to and ask their forgiveness. Perhaps, it’s your parents or your mate or an estranged friend. Please go today...tomorrow may be too late.   In his book Life on the Edge, Dr. James Dobson tells this powerful story. I want to conclude with it this morning:   “The hospital was unusually quiet that bleak January evening, quiet and still like the air before a storm. I stood in the nurses' station on the seventh floor and glanced at the clock. It was 9 p.m. I threw a stethoscope around my neck and headed for room 712, last room on the hall.  Room 712 had a new patient. Mr. Williams. A man all alone. A man strangely silent about his family. As I entered the room, Mr. Williams looked up eagerly, but dropped his eyes when he saw it was only me, his nurse. I pressed the stethoscope over his chest and listened. Strong, slow, even beating. Just what I wanted to hear.  There seemed little indication he had suffered a slight heart attack a few hours earlier. He looked up from his starched white bed. "Nurse, would you ‑ " He hesitated, tears filling his eyes. Once before he had started to ask me a question, but changed his mind. I touched his hand, waiting. He brushed away a tear. "Would you call my daughter? Tell her I've had a heart attack. A slight one. You see, I live alone and she is the only family I have.” His respiration suddenly speeded up. I turned his nasal oxygen up to eight liters a minute. "Of course I'll call her," I said, studying his face. He gripped the sheets and pulled himself forward, his face tense with urgency. "Will you call her right away ‑ as soon as you can?" He was breathing fast ‑ too fast. "I'll call her the very first thing," I said, patting his shoulder. I flipped off the light. He closed his eyes, such young blue eyes in his 50‑year‑old face.    Room 712 was dark except for a faint night light under the sink. Oxygen gurgled in the green tubes above his bed. Reluctant to leave, I moved through the shadowy silence to the window. The panes were cold. Below a foggy mist curled through the hospital parking lot. "Nurse," he called, "could you get me a pencil and paper?" I dug a scrap of yellow paper and a pen from my pocket and set it on the bedside table. I walked back to the nurses' station and sat in a squeaky swivel chair by the phone. Mr. Williams's daughter was listed on his chart as the next of kin. I got her number from information and dialed. Her soft voice answered. “Janie, this is Sue Kidd, a registered nurse at the hospital.  I'm calling about your father. He was admitted tonight with a slight heart attack and‑"No!" she screamed into the phone," startling me. "He's not dying is he ?" "His condition is stable at the moment," I said, trying hard to sound convincing. Silence. I bit my lip. "You must not let him die!" she said. Her voice was so utterly compelling that my hand trembled on the phone. "He is getting the very best care." “But you don't understand," she pleaded. "My daddy and I haven't spoken since my 21st birthday, we had a fight over my boyfriend. I ran out of the house. I haven't been back. All these months I've wanted to go to him for forgiveness. The last thing I said to him was, 'I hate you'." Her voice cracked and I heard her heave great agonizing sobs. I sat, listening, tears burning my eyes. A father and a daughter, so lost to each other. Then I was thinking of my own father, many miles away. It has been so long since I had said, "I love you." As Janie struggled to control her tears, I breathed a prayer. "Please God, let this daughter find forgiveness." "I'm coming. Now! I'll be there in 30 minutes," she said. Click. She had hung up. I tried to busy myself with a stack of charts on the desk. I couldn't concentrate.  Room 712;  I knew I had to get back to 712. I hurried down the hall nearly in a run. I opened the door. Mr. Williams lay unmoving. I reached for his pulse. There was none. "Code 99, Room 712. Code 99. STAT." The alert was shooting through the hospital within seconds after I called the switchboard through the intercom by the bed. Mr. Williams had had a cardiac arrest. With lightning speed I leveled the bed and bent over his mouth, breathing air into his lungs (twice). I positioned my hands over his chest and compressed. One, two, three. I tried to count. At fifteen I moved back to his mouth and breathed as deeply as I could. Where was help? Again I compressed and breathed, Compressed and breathed. He could not die! "Oh God," I prayed. "His daughter is coming. Don't let it end this way." The door burst open. Doctors and nurses poured into the room pushing emergency equipment. A doctor took over the manual compression of the heart. A tube was inserted through his mouth as an airway. Nurses plunged syringes of medicine into the intravenous tubing. I connected the heart monitor. Nothing. Not a beat. My own heart pounded. "God, don't let it end like this. Not in bitterness and hatred. His daughter is coming. Let her find peace." "Stand back," cried a doctor. I handed him the paddles for the electrical shock to the heart. He placed them on Mr. Williams's chest. Over and over we tried. But nothing. No response. Mr. Williams was dead. A nurse unplugged the oxygen. The gurgling stopped. One by one they left, grim and silent. How could this happen? How? I stood by his bed, stunned. A cold wind rattled the window, pelting the panes with snow. Outside ‑ everywhere ‑ seemed a bed of blackness, cold and dark. How could I face his daughter? When I left the room, I saw her against a wall by a water fountain. A doctor who had been inside 712 only moments before stood at her side, talking to her, gripping her elbow. Then he moved on, leaving her slumped against the wall. Such pathetic hurt reflected from her face. Such wounded eyes. She knew. The doctor had told her that her father was gone. I took her hand and led her into the nurses' lounge. We sat on little green stools, neither saying a word. She stared straight ahead at a pharmaceutical calendar, glass‑faced, almost breakable‑looking. "Janie, I'm so, so sorry," I said. It was pitifully inadequate. "I never hated him, you know. I loved him," she said. God, please help her, I thought. Suddenly she whirled toward me. "I want to see him." My first thought was, Why put yourself through more pain? Seeing him will only make it worse. But I got up and wrapped my arm around her. We walked slowly down the corridor to 712. Outside the door I squeezed her hand, wishing she would change her mind about going inside. She pushed open the door. We moved to the bed, huddled together, taking small steps in unison. Janie leaned over the bed and buried her face in the sheets. I tried not to look at her at this sad, sad good‑bye. I backed against the bedside table. My hand fell upon a scrap of yellow paper. I picked it up. It read: My dearest Janie, I forgive you. I pray you will also forgive me. I know that you love me.  I love you too. Daddy....The note was shaking in my hands as I thrust it toward Janie. She read it once. Then twice. Her tormented face grew radiant. Peace began to glisten in her eyes. She hugged the scrap of paper to her breast. "Thank You, God," I whispered, looking up at the window. A few crystal stars blinked through the blackness. A snowflake hit the window and melted away, gone forever. Life seemed as fragile as a snowflake on the window. But thank you, God, that relationships, sometimes fragile as snowflakes, can be mended together again ‑ but there is not a moment to spare. I crept from the room and hurried to the phone. I would call my father. I would say, "I love you."   Friend, have you accepted God’s forgiveness? If so, why are you harboring deadly bitterness in your soul? Do you need to do business with God this morning? Is there someone that you need to forgive? Someone that you need to ask forgiveness of? Make it right before it’s too late!