"Issumagijoujunainermik"

I was reading about a preacher who went on a missionary trip in an Eskimo village. (This sounds like the start of a joke...) When he got there, he soon discovered that the Eskimos had no word in their language for "forgiveness." Since the concept of forgiveness is such a cornerstone in Christianity, they created an Eskimo word to describe it by linking several words together. The word is "issumagijoujunainermik" and it means "spelling bee nightmare." Actually, it literally means "not-being-able-to-think-about-it-anymore."

What a wonderful description! This has been a theme for me this week. As I posted earlier about my friend Jan's wonderful thought: "God is much more interested in your future than your past." It seems to me that we spend way too much time beating ourselves (and worse, others) up for mistakes that are in the past. Our TV shows remind us that our waist used to be thinner and our hair fuller. Our sports media remind us that our team didn't win the championship. (I mean, in Boston they're STILL talking about an error that Bill Buckner made over 20 YEARS AGO!) Our inner demons remind us about that time we gave in or that regret for the thing we did years ago. We kill ourselves over the things we didn't say...and the things we did. It goes on and on.

It's not that God can't remember. He knows what we did and the mistakes we're going to make in the future. But he loves us still. As the psalmist puts it "As far as the east is from the west, so far He removes our transgressions from us." (Psalm 103:12)

Or as the Eskimo says: "Issumagijoujunainermik!"