The Day of Silence
How hard this day must have been for Christ's family and friends- He was gone.
Today is a great day to reflect on the changes we want to make to live more Christ centered lives and become more like He is.
I remember the first time I read this story... still hits hard everytime.
Forgiven Forever
Lisa
sat on the floor of her old room, staring at the box that lay in front
of her. It was an old shoe box that she had decorated to become a
memory box many years before. Stickers and penciled flowers
covered the top and sides.
Its edges were worn, the corners of the lid taped so as to keep their shape.
It had been three years since Lisa last opened the box. A sudden move to
Boston had kept her from packing it. But now that she was back
home, she
took the time to look again at the memories.
Fingering the corners of the box and stroking its cover, Lisa pictured in her mind what was inside.
There was a photo of the family trip to the Grand Canyon, a note from
her friend telling her that Nick Bicotti liked her, and the
Indian arrowhead she
had found while on her senior class trip. One by one, she remembered the
items in the box, lingering over the sweetest, until she came
to the last and only painful memory. She knew what it looked
like--a single sheet of paper upon which lines had been drawn to form
boxes, 490 of them to be exact.
And each box contained a check mark, one for each time.
The story behind it..........
"How many times must I forgive my brother?" the disciple Peter had asked
Jesus. "Seven times?" Lisa's Sunday school teacher had read
Jesus' surprise answer to the class. "Seventy times seven."
Lisa had leaned over to her brother Brent as the teacher continued
reading. "How many times is that?" she whispered. Brent, though
two years younger, was smarter than she was.
"Four hundred and ninety," Brent wrote on the corner of his Sunday
school paper. Lisa saw the message, nodded, and sat back in her
chair. She watched her brother as the lesson continued. He was
small for his age, with narrow shoulders and short arms. His
glasses were too large for his face, and his hair always matted in
swirls. He bordered on being a nerd, but his incredible skills
at everything, especially music, made him popular with his
classmates.
Brent had learned to play the piano at age four, the clarinet at age
seven, and had just begun to play oboe. His music teachers said
he'd be a famous
musician someday. There was only one thing at which Lisa was better than
Brent--basketball. They played it almost every afternoon after
school.
Brent could have refused to play, but he knew that it was Lisa's only
joy in the midst of her struggles to get C's and D's at school.
Lisa's attention came back to her Sunday school teacher as the woman
finished the lesson and closed with prayer. That same Sunday
afternoon found brother and sister playing basketball in the
driveway. It was then that the counting had begun. Brent was guarding
Lisa as she dribbled toward the basket. He had tried to bat the
ball away, got his face near her elbow, and took a shot on the
chin. "Ow!", he cried out and turned away.
Lisa saw her opening and drove to the basket, making an easy lay-up. She
gloated over her success but stopped when she saw Brent. "You
okay?",she
asked. Brent shrugged his shoulders.
"Sorry," Lisa said. "Really. It was a cheap shot."
"It's all right. I forgive you," he said. A thin smile then formed on his face. "Just 489 more times though."
"Whaddaya mean?" Lisa asked.
"You know...what we learned in Sunday school today. You're supposed to
forgive someone 490 times. I just forgave you, so now you have
489 left,"
he kidded. The two of them laughed at the thought of keeping track of
every time Lisa had done something to Brent. They were sure she
had gone past 490 long ago.
The rain interrupted their game, and the two moved indoors. "Wanna play
Battleship?" Lisa asked. Brent agreed, and they were soon on the
floor of the living room with their game boards in front of
them. Each took turns calling out a letter and number
combination, hoping to hit each other's ships.
Lisa knew she was in trouble as the game went on. Brent had only lost
one ship out of five. Lisa had lost three. Desperate to win, she
found herself leaning over the edge of Brent's barrier ever so
slightly. She was thus able to see where Brent had placed two of
his ships. She quickly evened the score.
Pleased, Lisa searched once more for the location of the last two ships.
She peered over the barrier again, but this time Brent caught
her in the act. "Hey, you're cheating!" He stared at her in
disbelief.
Lisa's face turned red. Her lips quivered. "I'm sorry," she said,
staring at the carpet. There was not much Brent could say. He
knew Lisa sometimes did things like this. He felt sorry that
Lisa found so few things she could do well. It was wrong for her to
cheat, but he knew the temptation was hard
for her. "Okay, I forgive you," Brent said. Then he added with a small laugh, "I guess it's down to 488 now, huh?"
"Yeah, I guess so." She returned his kindness with a weak smile and added, "Thanks for being my brother, Brent."
Brent's forgiving spirit gripped Lisa, and she wanted him to know how
sorry she was. It was that evening that she had made the chart
with the 490 boxes. She showed it to him before he went to bed.
"We can keep track of every time I mess up and you forgive me," she said.
"See, I'll put a check in each box--like this." She placed two marks in the upper left-hand boxes.
"These are for today." Brent raised his hands to protest. "You don't need to keep--"
"Yes I do!" Lisa interrupted. "You're always forgiving me, and I want to
keep track. Just let me do this!" She went back to her room and
tacked the chart to her bulletin board.
There were many opportunities to fill in the chart in the years that
followed. She once told the kids at school that Brent talked in
his sleep and called out Rhonda Hill's name, even though it
wasn't true. The teasing caused Brent days and days of misery. When she
realized how cruel she had been,
Lisa apologized sincerely. That night she marked box number 96.
Forgiveness number 211 came in the tenth grade when Lisa failed
to bring home
his English book. Brent had stayed home sick that day and had asked her
to bring it so he could study for a quiz. She forgot and he got a
C.
Number 393 was for lost keys...418 for the extra bleach she put in the
washer, which ruined his favorite polo shirt...449, the dent she
had put in his car when she had borrowed it.
There was a small ceremony when Lisa checked number 490. She used a gold
pen for the check mark, had Brent sign the chart, and then
placed it in her memory box.
"I guess that's the end," Lisa said. "No more screw-ups from me anymore!"
Brent just laughed. "Yeah, right."
Number 491 was just another one of Lisa's careless mistakes, but its
hurt lasted a lifetime. Brent had become all that his music
teachers said he would. Few could play the oboe better than he.
In his fourth year at the best music school in the United States, he
received the opportunity of a
lifetime--a chance to try out for New York City's great orchestra.
The tryout would be held sometime during the following two weeks. It
would be the fulfillment of his young dreams. But he never got
the chance. Brent had been out when the call about the tryout
came to the house. Lisa was the only one home and on her way out
the door, eager to get to work on time.
"Two-thirty on the tenth," the secretary said on the phone. Lisa did not
have a pen, but she told herself that she could remember it.
"Got it. Thanks." I can remember that, she thought. But she did
not. It was a week later around the dinner table that Lisa
realized her mistake.
"So, Brent," his mom asked him, "When do you try out?"
"Don't know yet. They're supposed to call." Lisa froze in her seat.
"Oh, no!" she blurted out loud. "What's today's date? Quick!"
"It's the twelfth," her dad answered. "Why?"
A terrible pain ripped through Lisa's heart. She buried her face in her
hands, crying. "Lisa, what's the matter?" her mother asked.
Through sobs Lisa explained what had happened. "It was two days
ago...the tryout... two-thirty... the call came... last week."
Brent sat back in his chair, not believing Lisa.
"Is this one of your jokes, sis?" he asked, though he could tell her
misery was real. She shook her head, still unable to look at
him.
"Then I really missed it?" She nodded.
Brent ran out of the kitchen without a word. He did not come out of his
room the rest of the evening. Lisa tried once to knock on the
door, but she could not face him. She went to her room where she
cried bitterly.
Suddenly she knew that she had to do. She had ruined Brent's life. He
could never forgive her for that. She had failed her family, and
there was nothing to do but to leave home. Lisa packed her
pickup truck in the middle of the night and left a note behind, telling
her folks she'd be all right. She began writing a note to Brent,
but her words sounded empty to her. Nothing I say could make a
difference anyway, she thought.
Two days later she got a job as a waitress in Boston. She found an
apartment not too far from the restaurant. Her parents tried
many times to reach her, but Lisa ignored their letters.
"It's too late," she wrote them once. "I've ruined Brent's life, and I'm not coming back."
Lisa did not think she would ever see home again. But one day in the
restaurant where she worked she saw a face she knew. "Lisa!"
said Mrs. Nelson, looking up from her plate. "What a surprise."
The woman was a friend of Lisa's family from back home. "I was so sorry
to hear about your brother," Mrs. Nelson said softly. "Such a
terrible accident. But we can be thankful that he died quickly.
He didn't suffer."
Lisa stared at the woman in shock.
"Wh-hat," she finally stammered.
It couldn't be! Her brother? Dead? The woman quickly saw that Lisa did
not know about the accident. She told the girl the sad story of
the speeding car, the rush to the hospital, the doctors working
over Brent. But all they could do was not enough to save him.
Lisa returned home that afternoon.
Now she found herself in her room thinking about her brother as she held
the small box that held some of her memories of him. Sadly, she
opened the box and peered inside. It was as she remembered,
except for one item--Brent's chart. It was not there. In its place, at
the bottom of the box, was an envelope. Her hands shook as she
tore it open and removed a letter.
The first page read:
Dear Lisa,
It was you who kept count, not me. But if you're stubborn enough to keep count, use the new chart I've made for you.
Love,
Brent
Lisa turned to the second page where she found a chart just like the one
she had made as a child, but on this one the lines were drawn
in perfect precision. And unlike the chart she had kept, there
was but one check mark in the upper left- hand corner. Written in red
felt tip pen over the
entire page were the words: "Number 491. Forgiven, forever."
