Are you bothered that Old Man Potter doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get his just desserts in _It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s A Wonderful Life_?
\n\tToday, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been thinking about the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Happily ever after\u00e2\u20ac\u201dexcept that\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6\u00e2\u20ac\u009d endings. I have had one or two \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Mr. Potters\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in my life\u00e2\u20ac\u201dsomeone who has drawn my anger, invited my obsessive thoughts, and conjured my most malicious speechmaking even during my dreams. My Mr. Potter has not always been male, but I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll use masculine pronouns in this blogpost anyway. Sometimes my Mr. Potter has humiliated me, but more often he has made life difficult for a loved one of mine\u00e2\u20ac\u201da parent, a sibling, my spouse, my children. I won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t go into detail, but there have been people in my life who have done things to me or my loved ones which are just as serious and hard to forgive as Potter\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s cruel theft. (And yes, someone in my family has a Mr. Potter right now.) It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s most difficult to forgive when the offense is continuous, when Potter STILL has our money or our reputation, and no angels are in sight.
\n\tAs I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve pondered forgiving Mr. Potter, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve found myself thinking, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153As soon as he restores what he took, I can forgive this.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Usually, I would prefer (and envision) that the restoration take place after he has been made to feel the full impact of his actions and after I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve found the perfect adjective to describe him\u00e2\u20ac\u201dwhich I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve uttered in dramatic contempt, and to his face.
\n\tWell, God has called me on this. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve had the most uncomfortable of witnesses\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthe kind when the Spirit witnesses against ME and tells me that my anger is incompatible with a Christ-like life.
\n\tOf course, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve tried explaining very rationally to the Spirit why in my particular case, the person I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m angry at is a devil, so it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a good thing to hone my speechmaking skills until I can rival Dick Cheney\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s writers describing Saddam Hussein.
\n\tAn unforgettable image has answered. It is Christ on the cross, forgiving those who have put the nails into his flesh. He doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t wait to forgive until after his glorious triumph and resurrection, but does it while he is still suffering from their deliberate aim. He has yet to die when he tells His Father that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153they know not what they do.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d
\n\tWhat I have realized as I have considered the little thorns in my side and the Mr. Potters who had some part in putting them there, is that anger is faithless. The object of my anger becomes my god, because I am continually returning to it to mentally pronounce yet one more, better-phrased rebuke (the precise opposite of praising the Lord). I have left the true God and am paying obeisance to an image I have patched together from my own scabbed perceptions.
\n\tWhen faith is at my center, I understand that the outcome of whatever machinations Mr. Potter can set into motion will be nothing compared to the miracles of God. If I truly believe, I must somehow declare–even while I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m still bleeding–that God is yet my God, and will forever remain my focus.
\n\tSo, the cast of SNL was wrong when they showed the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153restored\u00e2\u20ac\u009d version of Capra\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s work (http:\/\/snltranscripts.jt.org\/86\/86hlife.phtml ), and the cast realized just who had stolen George Bailey\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s money, and then beat Potter senseless. No, Potter lived out the rest of his days as a mean old man, and nobody ever discovered that he had stolen that all-important payment from Bailey\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Bank and Loan. And George Bailey never returned to him with a better phrase than \u00e2\u20ac\u0153scurvy spider,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d though he did attend Potter\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s funeral, and even offered the eulogy\u00e2\u20ac\u201dwhich was a kind eulogy and acknowledged that we never really know another\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s heart, nor what their absence might mean to us. (Who, after all, would George Bailey have become without Mr. Potter?) Mary Bailey sent some roses\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand none of the petals were missing. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Are you bothered that Old Man Potter doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get his just desserts in _It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s A Wonderful Life_?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corn"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/91"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3623\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}