3 Be on your guard. If your brother sins,[a] rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him. 4 And if he sins against you seven times in a day, and comes back to you seven times, saying, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive him.” (Luke 17:3-4 CSB)

This is math that does not add up for most of us.

We are lucky if we can forgive someone once, but repeated wrong doing typically gets under our skin fast. Once there it festers into quite the sore and does not go away quickly. It smolders just under the surface as we lie in wait for the wrong to happen again.

Too often that waiting and anticipation manifest even more negativity in our lives. Before long we are waiting and watching for any perceived affront and we find we are miserable in life.

But if we practice forgiveness and pray for those who have done us wrong, we find we release all that pent up tension and no longer expect the next shoe to fall.

We can then begin to live life in an open and caring way…even when someone does us wrong seven times seven.