You’re in the forgiveness business. How good are you at it?

I like the story about Moses talking God out of smiting the people of Israel off the face of the planet. At what other point in history does a human being hold the moral high ground and teach God how to be compassionate?

By this time a lot of men and women of doubtful reputation were hanging around Jesus, listening intently. The Pharisees and religion scholars were not pleased, not at all pleased.

My wife, daughters and I were at an amusement park one summer and our youngest daughter got lost. Three of us took a left at a fork in the path while 5-year-old Patti got carried along to the right with a large group of kids on a school outing. She wasn’t missing long, but it seemed like forever.

The 30-something woman broke down in the middle of the store and started bawling her eyes out in front of her friend Andrew. “I’m so unhappy,” she confided. “I hate the way I look. I hate my job. All my friends are married or coupled off. I’m so lonely and miserable.”

A father shared with me a conversation he had with his son who had just started driving. The first few times the son took the family car everything went just fine. So the father wasn’t prepared for the night his son arrived home 40 minutes late.

We ask our loving God to forgive our sins.

In essence, we’re “loved sinners.” Both goodness and sin constitute our real identity. Not to recognize the truth of either leaves us either unhealthily depressed or dangerously inflated, too hard on ourselves or too easy on ourselves.