Tuesday of the 3rd Week of Lent
Dan 3:25,34-43
Mt 18:21-35
“Do not remember the sins of my youth. In your love remember me.”
Today’s psalm is David’s prayer for guidance and deliverance. Chosen by God, David was a good king, but he had committed many sins. The most notable one was committing adultery with Bathsheba; and to cover up Bathsheba’s pregnancy, David engineered the death of her husband, Uriah, where he told Joab to “Put Uriah out in front where the fighting is fiercest and then fall back, so that he gets wounded and killed.” (2 Samuel 15).
We’ve all had sins of our youth or past in which we are ashamed of. I’ll admit that I grew up a rebellious child, youth and adult who didn’t often believe in conforming. Was I a wayward child? Probably. Thinking back, I was also the black sheep in the family — where I often gave my parents heartaches when they had to drive out in the middle of the night looking for me, or not knowing what to do with me when I did things my way. Those were my self-discovery years. After all, I was brought up by my grandparents and only came to live with my family at the age of seven.
I remember sneaking out at night, going to house parties, started dating at 15, venturing to the US for further studies on my own, getting a tattoo and starting to smoke at 25. My parents, both of whom have since passed on, never knew about my tattoo or my smoking. At the age of 19, I lost my mother and I was also lost. I probably went through what people today would call a mental health crisis, or even, depression. Back then, nobody knew better. I was not close to anyone else in my family, so I was often left to my own devices and could only express myself in writing – poetry specifically. Then, I met and fell in love with an atheist whom I was engaged to. Thank goodness, I didn’t marry him. The last time I heard or spoke to him, he was still falling in and out of marriages. Then, I met my husband, who was then a non-practicing Catholic with his own set of baggages in tow. Put the both of us together, and it almost seemed like a disaster in the making.
Along the way, I found God and was baptised. Ironically, it was my husband who gave me a reason to get baptised. But that wasn’t the real conversion story. The real one happened some two decades later, after my Conversion Experience Retreat, and many other retreats following that. Over the years, my relationship with Jesus grew deeper. In one encounter, Jesus revealed to me that he has been in my life throughout, and he showed me glimpses of how he was there when I fell in primary school, when nobody else knew I had been knocked over and fell on the back of my head; and he was also there sitting beside me in my room when I was grieving over the loss of my mum. He was there with me in all the times when I had yet to come to know him.
Even now, Jesus keeps showing up and showing me love. I know for sure that he loves me and will forever remember to love me, no matter what. His love is unconditional. We may fall into sin again and again, and even when we are unable to forgive ourselves sometimes, he is waiting to forgive us. There are many things I’ve done that I’m not proud of. But they don’t matter to him. He, like the father of the prodigal son, can’t wait to welcome me back and shower me with lots of love. Like in today’s Gospel, Jesus said that we must forgive not seven times, ‘but seventy-seven times’, because God will forgive us no matter how many times we’ve sinned (as long as we want to be forgiven and go to him with a repentant heart). It is not so much what we’ve done in the past, but more importantly it is our heart that seeks reconciliation.
(Today’s OXYGEN by Cynthia Chew)
Prayer: Dear Lord Jesus, remember us in all of our good and bad times. Show us how to love like you, and to forgive like you. Fill our repentant hearts with your love so that we can show others who you are. Amen Thanksgiving: Thank you, Jesus, for remembering to love us even when we don’t love ourselves that much, for being there even when we forget you and for waiting for us to come back to you wholeheartedly.
OXYGEN 
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