There’s No Chain

Michael Andres

Reading

So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him.
Luke 15:20

Reflection

I don’t do forgiveness particularly well.
I manage alright with others — you know, just enough grace to get by, but not so much that you’d confuse it for ease.

It’s forgiving myself that I struggle with most.
I wonder if you ever feel the same.

I understand, conceptually, the idea of forgiveness. And after all these years of hanging around the church — hearing about it, reading about it, writing (gulp) about it — I think I even understand a thing or two theologically.

But lately, I don’t much care about all that. It doesn’t seem to help when I’m still living like I owe a debt no one’s asking me to pay.
Like I’m both the debtor and the collector, chasing myself in circles for something grace has already released.

Jim Harrison, the rugged and forlorn poet of the space between the mountains and the plains, ends his feral and weary Barking with the words: “I was a dog on a short chain and now there’s no chain.”

My insistence on holding myself accountable — especially when I’ve already seen the mercy of God, already tasted the grace I proclaim to others — is, in the end, just another way of trying to put the world back upside-down.
The very world Jesus turned right-side-up.

Still, I find myself pacing the same bare patch of ground, calling it realism or grounding, when it’s really just fear.
Fear of living unchained. Fear of forgiving what feels unforgivable in myself.

But the kingdom of God doesn’t deal in chains.
It deals in healing — the kind that tends to calloused, discolored wounds and quietly reminds us: you don’t carry that weight anymore.
I waste my words sometimes barking at ghosts or howling down old hallways, rehearsing my shame.
But I’m learning — slowly — that living in the kingdom means lending my voice to a new song.
One that’s already being sung.
One that sounds both ancient and impossibly beautiful.

If Jesus is right — and I believe he is — then maybe the most faithful thing I can do today isn’t penance, or self-justification, or self-flagellation.
Maybe it’s just stepping off the worn circle.
Walking — awkwardly, haltingly, freely — into grace.

“Forgiveness,” Pastor Robert reminded us, “means releasing the past so we can find our future.”

I just wish I knew an easier way to get there.

But maybe this is the way.

PRAYER:
God of mercy,
Who meets us while we are still far off,
Teach us how to forgive ourselves —
Not just once, but daily, hourly, breath by breath.
Let us walk the slow road of return.
And when we forget the way,
Whisper it again:
There’s no chain. Just come.
AMEN.