When George and I were driving the family to church one Sunday our son, Allen, who was seven, was in the back seat memorizing his Bible verse for Sunday school class. He said, "Is this right? John 3:16 For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son so that whoever believeth in Him shall not PANIC." George looked at me and said, "That is close enough."

Today (if I don't panic!) I'd like to share a few thoughts on how we can help ourselves to not panic ... how we can let some things go ... how we can accept the gift of Grace from God so that we might better live a good and serving life. I want to build on the lesson of last week: John 3. This, you know, is the second Sunday of Lent. On Ash Wednesday, where we were reminded that we begin as dust and end as dust, Jim Bell reassured us again that it is up to us to accept God's great gift of Love. Then we won't panic, but see and serve the needs of the world.

In Bartholomew and the Oobleck you learned that it is a story about a king, King Derwin of the Kingdom of Didd, who had trouble admitting that he was wrong, but also he has a bit of trouble being content with what he has. It seems that he had grown angry with, of all things, the sky. So, the story went, he bargained and got "oobleck," but soon the sticky gooey stuff kept coming from the sky. The wise Bartholomew tells the king that he can end this whole disaster by saying two simple words, I'm sorry. But the king can't do it. He is too mighty, too proud to admit that he was wrong.

Bartholomew, looked him straight in the eye and said, "You may be a mighty king. But you're sitting in oobleck up to your chin. And so is everyone else in your land. And if you won't even say you're sorry, you're no sort of a king at all!"

Finally, the king acknowledges that Bartholomew is right. Reduced to sobbing, the king says the magic words. Then all the oobleck just simply, quietly melted away. He let it go. All is well with the kingdom again. All of a sudden, rain, sun, fog and snow don't seem so bad anymore.

In the Bible, there are many characters (Jacob, Moses, David and Paul) who at some point, in order to move on, had to summon the humility and courage to say the magic words, I'm sorry. And certainly they too did not need any more ooblecky green slime in their lives.

Are any of you familiar with the popular Christmas toy, the Hot Wheels Volcano that came with a can of slime? Santa brought our grandson one to our house. A friend told me that the day after Christmas there were stacks of them at the return counter at Toys 'R Us! Well, one doesn't return things to the North Pole, but it was obvious that the world was not ready for all that green gooey slime either.

The physical act of saying the words, I'm sorry, is simple. It takes about one second. It is not a tongue twister. It's easy to pronounce. When I was an exchange student I was having trouble learning enough Dutch to speak all I wanted with my non-English speaking host mother. I kept asking my host brother, who had been to America the year before as an exchange student, to translate for me. That is hard work! One day seeing his frustration, I said, "I'm sorry." We had become good friends but he replied, "Oh, you Americans, you just go along and along and then just say, I'm sorry."

And right there begins a whole additional topic of peace and conflict resolution — nations learning to really say, I'm sorry. I'll leave that big broad topic to Jim Bell and you other experts in the congregation. I'll stick with what one simple human can try to do to get through a day. Our Peacemakers group has offered some challenging classes for us. Some of you were just in the January class about Guatemala where very precarious situations prevent reconciliation and having wounds healed. Their video was called Precarious Peace. Let alone our U.S.A. involvement in Iraq. Just Tuesday we helped welcome home to Peoria our nephew, Lt. Col. Fred Allen, and his Blackhorse Helicopter soldiers. There is much work to do in the learning the process of forgiveness of nations. If you read the paper this morning about Iraq, that is very evident.

The true difficulty in saying these two words, I'm sorry, lies in what they represent. These words, by their very nature, are self-effacing. The person who says them, and means them, has put himself or herself in a position of vulnerability and humility.

It is at this point that God and Grace come in. What is it Rev. Bell says to us each Sunday after our Prayer of Confession in his "Declaration of Pardon?" He ends by saying, "My friends believe the Good News! And we respond, "In Jesus Christ we are set free to love and serve!"

My mother used to tell me that if I wanted to carry a grudge that I'd be the one who is hurt the most. It can weigh one down, consume your otherwise useful creative thinking time, and make one ugly. "Let it go!" she'd say.

The potential positive outcomes of saying I'm sorry can be profound. In Dr. Seuss's story, these two words saved the entire Kingdom of Didd. In our world, these words have the power to save and heal marriages, friendship and families.

The wonderful power in these three syllables is found in what they represent: a turnaround, a new direction, a change of heart, a realization of sorrow, regret and compassion. Humans long to be connected. Indeed, these two words signify new life, new hope, a fresh start ... just like a new morning. I know many of you love mornings and sunrises as I do. You're out there walking! Just like a fresh snow — everything looks clean and serene again.

Where would we be without these two words, I'm sorry? Where would we be if every mistake that we made meant the end? If every time we hurt another person, there was no way to get past the hurt and move on? Viewed in this light, the words, I'm sorry are, ultimately, wonderful words of life. Those of us who are not capable of saying them are missing out on the key to overcoming our shortcomings and frailties — our sinful nature — in order to live anew.

We must remember, however, that the full potential of the words, I'm sorry, is influenced in part by the person who is hearing them. It is one thing to say I'm sorry; it's another thing to hear and accept these words. Back to diplomatic relationships — are we truly understanding each other — are we "speaking" the same language?

The key as hard as it is to say, I'm sorry, it can be even harder to say I forgive you. Without forgiveness, I'm sorry remains suspended, waiting for a response that re-establishes the connection, that fixes what was broken.

From Matthew 6:14-15 I read today: "For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses."

When I was a child and would say The Lord's Prayer when we visited our cousins in the Methodist church, we'd say "forgive those who trespass against us" instead of "to forgive our debts as we forgive our debtors." All I could think of was that my farmer father was generous about his land until he built a pond for a drinking place for his Hereford steers. Then the sign went up, No Trespassing. What did that mean? He was mainly afraid of liability and didn't want kids swimming unguarded in that lake. But as years went along, I soon began to gather a deeper meaning of "those who trespass against us."

The Bible tells us that those who do not know how to forgive will not be forgiven. At first glance, not receiving forgiveness appears to be a consequence — a divine punishment, if you will — for not offering forgiveness. Sometimes I wonder, however, if this is not so much a punishment as it is a true statement of spiritual and emotional reality.

That is, perhaps it is not possible for someone who does not know how to forgive others to truly experience the freeing power that comes from being forgiven. Then the oobleck can simply, quietly, melt away.

Forgiveness is, at its heart, an act of freedom. It takes practice and maturity. To "let it go" — takes guts, to be quite crude about it. Why? We are good and bad simultaneously. It really takes practice and I truly believe this practice can best be tackled with the help of the author of our best book, the Bible. By God's GRACE we are set free. Let it go.

And as our middle child said when she was five,"God's the boss!" (That will get a parent's attention too, especially the way she'd look at George when she was saying it.) I believe she had learned her Sunday school lesson well from Psalms 100:3 — "Know that the Lord is God! It is He that made us, and we are his."

Sometimes we tend to build ammunition — unknowingly, maybe. Do we want to have to say "I'm sorry.?" Is it our humanness? One day our 4 year old grandson was riding in his rear car seat with his mother captive driving in the front.

"Mommy?"

"Yes."

"Would you tell me all those things again that I do that really bug you?"

Sometimes it does just seem we collect this stuff so we can later say we're sorry.

Or when he asked her,

"May I go up to heaven tomorrow?"

"Well, why do you want to do that?"

"I just need to stay a day."

"Yes, tell me more."

"You said your grandmother and grandfather are there. I need to ask them if when you'd go visit them, if you behaved and did everything they said you should do."

Let us refer again to the Psalms read today. I'll risk asking you to take out your pew Bibles, if you wish, and turn again to page 506, Psalm 32, the Joy of Forgiveness that Kurt led us in the responsive reading.

Back to my student days in Holland, my host father would hand me an English Bible on our way to the Dutch Reformed Church. "When you can't understand the Dutch sermon, read this," he said. So if you are bored with this message today, just reread Psalms.

Psalms 32: It begins, like in our bulletin verse of preparation: "Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Happy are those to whom the Lord imputes no iniquity and whose spirit there is no deceit. (And at the end): Many are the torments of the wicked but steadfast love surrounds those who trust in the Lord."

Not to leave out our youngest daughter, when she was four she liked to tell us her Sunday school lesson: "And God made all the people and he said, JUST BE NICE."

Coaches teach their players to "just be nice." Many of you saw Illini Dee Brown say I'm sorry after elbowing a Michigan State team member. The game of life must go on. Let it go!

In The Kite Runner, an Afghan story by Khaled Hosseini, Ali is coming to the end of a great saga, and he says as he slips a picture back where he found it. "Then I realized something: That last thought had brought no sting with it." He closed the door and wondered if that was how forgiveness budded, not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night. " Pack it up, let it go.

He also speaks of a trust that is built. It takes work. It takes time, this forgiveness stuff. Ali says, "It is as when spring comes, it melts the snow, one flake at a time." At last, there is redemption. "Many are the torments of the wicked, but steadfast love surrounds those who trust in the Lord."

Here during Lent we are given time and assurance to reflect on these things. Some of you have read the popular true book, Tuesdays with Morrie, by Mitch Albom. Morrie is dying and Mitch, a former student, visits him every Tuesday and has permission to write the story. Let me take you to the twelfth Tuesday chapter, We Talk about Forgiveness. I'd like to spend a few minutes on this. The chapter begins with "Forgive yourself before you die. Then forgive others."

As Mitch was holding Morrie in his last dying days, Morrie said, "Mitch, there is no point in keeping vengeance or stubbornness. These things (he sighed) — these things I so regret in my life. Pride. Vanity. Why do we do the things we do? It's not just other people we need to forgive, Mitch, he finally whispered. "We also need to forgive ourselves."

"Ourselves?"

"Yes, For all the things we didn't do. All the things we should have done. You can't get stuck on the regrets of what should have happened. That doesn't help you when you get to where I am. I always wished I had done more with my work; I wished I had written more books. I used to beat myself up over it. Now I see that never did any good. Make peace. You need to make peace with yourself and everyone around you."

Mitch learned over and dabbed at the tears in Morrie's eyes, opening and closing. He uttered: "Forgive yourself. Forgive others. Don't wait, Mitch. Not everyone gets the time I'm getting. Not everyone is as lucky." His breath was heavy. He let it go.

I've been known, and maybe you have too, to beat myself up. When we lived in Toronto our pastor of the Scottish Presbyterian church where we belonged gave me some good advice. Ian McPherson (sound Scottish-?!) said, "Margaret, you were angry, you were hurt, you were scared and now you're feeling badly even about that. First forgive yourself for being angry, hurt and scared. You must like yourself again in this situation. You should not forget, but you can begin to forgive the person who was truly threatening against you and your family." And, guess what, we came back to the states. I revisited the problem. And with time (and keeping a point of physical caution), forgiveness has come.

"Be glad in the Lord and rejoice." I can't believe it myself! ... the freedom of what "Letting It Go" gives. It releases fresh new creative juices. And isn't life a lot more fun to not carry that anger to weigh us down?

Since I started this message with a storybook, I'll end with one. When our special Eureka friend's daughter was dying in her twenties, we were called home to help. Hospice told us it was time to say our goodbyes, so her mother asked it I'd like to have a little time with Rachel. When I was a kindergarten teacher, Rachel had been in my class. She loved story time. So wanting what I did for this dear child to be the closest thing we knew together, I chose to read her a story. This was my last message to her (and her black lab, who never left her side). Where Love Starts ... dedicated to the special ME in all of us by Peggy Warren. This is a book from a special Des Moines, IA friend. Here I like to think of the words GRACE and LOVE as nearly the same.

"Love is a flower that grows in the sun.

And a playful kitten who wants to have fun.

Love is warm place when winter is cold.

And a caring grandma to snuggle and hold.

Love is a teacher who makes us feel good ... when we've done our work the best that we could.

Love is a friend who gives us a hug ... when we're feeling sad and our heart strings go tug.

Love is a rainbow, a kiss in the sky when sunshine and raindrops together go by.

Spiders and birds and bumble bees. Treetops and clouds, yes ... all of these are gifts of love that we feel in our hearts, that come from INSIDE US WHERE ALL OF LOVE STARTS.

So stretch out your arms and wrap them 'round tight — loving yourself with all of your might."

Perhaps we can start to let it go by first giving oneself a big round tight hug. And God so loved the world that we should NOT PANIC.