Luke 17: 4 "And if he sins against you seven times a day, and returns to you seven times, saying, 'I repent,' forgive him." ⁵ The apostles said to the Lord, "Increase our faith!"

This is advent, the season before we celebrate the birth of Christ, our savior. Christ came to this earth to seek the lost, to bring salvation to all men, to forgive. How much do we think about forgiveness?

Garth Brooks has a song with this as the chorus: "We bury the hatchet/ But leave the handle stickin' out/ We're always diggin' up things/ We should forget about/ When it comes to forgettin'/ Baby, there ain't no doubt/ We bury the hatchet/ But leave the handle sticking out "

One great obstacle to us in our walk with God is non-forgiveness. While the hatchet might seem to be buried, yet people continue to grab hold of the handle when they want to use it against someone. Jesus said if a brother repents, forgive him-that is, bury the hatchet and its handle. How many times, you might ask? As often as the brother repents, we are to forgive.

To forgive as often as is asked is a feature of Christ. We as men, I for myself, find forgiving over and over and over for the same basic things very annoying, after the first couple of failures, I start asking “why do you keep doing this?” Sometimes they seem that they are not even trying to change.

When people say “I am sorry” is that not supposed to mean that they are repentant? That they will try not to do it again? No. When people say “I am sorry” they are recognizing that they have failed, that I have failed. It needs to be furthered with “Will you forgive me” for repentance sake. The problem here however is again, do we keep forgiving?

Christ does.

No matter what is done towards us, no matter what we do to others, however much we do not like it, we are to forgive constantly, not holding and keeping a grudge. Rather we are to let it go, completely. Once we have forgiven someone of something, that error, that failure, that dumb and hurtful act no longer exists.

Yet to forgive like this is not something that we as humans can do easily or even totally. We must have Christ help us. The only way that we can fully bury the hatchet is with Christ’s hand on the shovel to get through the rocks and tough soil, to dig a big and deep enough hole for each and every single problem that we must forgive.

Don't grab hold of buried hatchet handles, for they become stumbling blocks to forgiveness.

As the Disciples asked, we should too: Lord increase our faith so that we too might be able to more easily forgive, and forgive, and forgive.