Devotion 2 – Forgiveness

Proverbs 19:11
"A man's wisdom gives him patience; it is to his glory to overlook an offense"

The sound was unmistakable, the boat was breaking under my feet. The NEW boat, my friends boat that he was so rightfully proud of and I was breaking it. OK, we weren't sinking - there was no hole - no water where there should be dry boat but it was breaking. I had gone ashore and was getting back in the boat - stepped too long where I shouldn't have and heard the cracking of the finish on the boat. I FELT HORRIBLE.
As you can imagine things got real quiet. My friend the boat owner in the back of the boat quiet because he was swallowing a ton of stuff he really, really wanted to say to me right then. My other friend in the middle of the boat quiet because he really, really wished at that particular moment he was in any other boat on the river. And me, because - well because I broke the boat. It stayed quiet for a long time.
What made things worse was that my friend the boat owner (of that boat I just broke) wasn't having the best of days on the water anyway. Flies caught in trees, fish breaking off in grasses at the bottom of the river, wind knots every other cast and now this. After a while my other friend and I tried to lighten the mood and it felt exactly like two guys trying to lighten up a guy that was having a pretty bad day - in other words we probably should have just kept our mouths shut but we're guys - not known for our wisdom.
Well, God smiled as he does often and the fish started biting. Divine Providence? Maybe - Probably, nonetheless we all started catching fish and the day just got better and better and ended with everyone feeling like it was an OK day on the river. Sure, the boat was still broken and I'll hear about it for a while (as I should). We'll get it fixed and then there will be another scratch, or dent, or hole, or whatever and we'll get through that because that's what friends do - they forgive.
I saw my boat owner friend the next day at church. He smiled, shook my hand like nothing had happened. I had brought a disk of pictures from our trip for him and he seemed excited to get it. It was really, really nice to see him smile....