Grace, prayer and Excel

I am a member of a ladies bible study group. We meet every other Wednesday evening. This is generally a very social time but we also get our lessons in. The current course we’re studying has been a bit clumsy. The person who wrote the book we’re using is in love with big words seldom used in the real world. Then, at odd moments he makes attempts to get clever with them, which generally ends up being just awkward.

Anyway, all that aside, last night our lesson was on divine grace and how we need to exercise forgiveness in our lives. At one point in the book they give you a prayer with a few blanks for you to fill in. It went something like this:

Dear Load, I forgive ________________ for ___________________ on ___________. Yadda yadda yadda.

In a little box above the prayer were three columns kinda like this:

**My brother John

**for not helping me

**Jan 2, 2008

My friend Debbi starts cracking up laughing and we’re all looking at her because this was the serious part of the lesson. I don’t want to say she was inappropriate because she will take exception, but hey. (Kiss, kiss Debbi!!) Anyway, once she can speak she says, “It’s like a mail merge!” Holy indebtedness! She was right!

We decided if you develop and maintain a spreadsheet of all the offences perpetrated against you and then periodically you could take them out, do a mail merge and there by be much more efficient in your forgiveness.

I wonder if God uses Excel, and the whole Office suite. Bill Gates better be worried if God has Vista, because I think the Devil had a hand in its development.

Well, I’ll sign off for now and go update my Excel spreadsheet.