Judd Lewis (1867-1945) worked for forty-five years at the Houston Post newspaper.  He wrote a column of humor and poetry under the name, “Uncle Judd.”  He was a man of great compassion who helped find a proper home for two hundred twenty-one homeless children.  No doubt, each of them had issues of forgiveness to work through, so it is not surprising that one of Lewis’s most memorable pieces involved the fine art of forgetting wrongs suffered.  His poem is titled “Forget It.”

Forget It
by Judd Mortimer Lewis

If you see a tall fellow ahead of a crowd, 
A leader of men, marching fearless and proud,
And you know of a tale whose mere telling aloud
Would cause his proud head in anguish be bowed,
It's a pretty good plan to Forget It.

If you know of a skeleton hidden away
In a closet, and guarded, and kept from the day
In the dark, and whose showing, whose sudden display
Would cause grief and sorrow and pain and dismay
It's a pretty good plan to Forget It.

If you know of a tale that will darken the joy
Of a man or a woman, a girl or a boy,
That will wipe out a smile or the least bit annoy
A fellow, or cause any gladness to cloy,
It's a pretty good plan to Forget It. *

“But you don’t know what I’ve done,” someone objects.  “I am so ashamed of what I’ve done.  I can never forget it.”

No, you can’t.

But you can be forgiven.  And as a result, you don’t have to continue to carry around the burdens of guilt and shame.

The Good News (the Gospel) is that Jesus died on the cross for our sins (see 1 Corinthians 15:1-4).  When we obey the Good News, we can have our sins washed away by the cleansing blood of Jesus.  “In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace” (Ephesians 1:7).

God will forgive our sins and give us the gift of eternal life when we place our faith and trust in Him (Acts 16:30-31), turn from our sins in repentance (Acts 17:30-31), confess Jesus before men (Romans 10:9-10), and are baptized (immersed) into Christ for the forgiveness of sins (Acts 2:38).  He will continue to cleanse us from sin as we continue to walk in the light of His Word (1 John 1:7).

The writer of Hebrews highlights one of God’s wonderful blessings of the New Covenant: "For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more" (Hebrews 8:12).

God will remember our sins no more.  He won’t bring them up again, ever.  He has essentially forgotten them.  Essentially, we can, too.  Thanks be to God.

Won’t YOU trust and obey Jesus so that YOUR sins can be washed away?

-- David A. Sargent

* From “A Good Plan” by Dr. Paul Chappell in www.ministry127.com

David A. Sargent, Minister

Church of Christ at Creekwood 
1901 Schillinger Rd. S.
Mobile, Alabama  36695

Archived issues of Living Water can be viewed and accessed from our website at: www.creekwoodcc.org