Keeping Short Accounts: The Ministry of Reconciliation

Keep­ing Short Accounts Makes the Process of Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion Easier

One theme that recurs in our house­hold is the process of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion. At the end of any trans­ac­tion should be the process of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion. It is an account­ing to com­ple­tion. What I mean by that is for any trans­ac­tion or inter­ac­tion to come to a close, there needs to be an account­ing for what is trans­acted (inter­acted) and pay­ment or resti­tu­tion made.

Today an ugly inter­ac­tion occurred between two mem­bers of my house­hold. One left for the bed room, smol­der­ing and divert­ing atten­tion by read­ing, the other was fold­ing laun­dry, regret­ting and smart­ing from the dam­ag­ing inter­ac­tion. In the end, what was needed to bring them together was rec­on­cil­i­a­tion. I explained to my appren­tice the con­cept of trans­ac­tion reconciliation.

I gave an exam­ple of a shop keeper and a cus­tomer rec­on­cil­ing accounts at the end of the month, with the items of the trans­ac­tion evened out through agreed account­ing and final pay­ment. I explained that when one party is injured in a con­fronta­tion, there is pay­ment due. That pay­ment is con­fes­sion in admis­sion and seek­ing of for­give­ness, which is where the rec­on­cil­i­a­tion hap­pens. I am happy to say that the trans­ac­tion occurred and both rec­on­ciled to good rela­tions imme­di­ately after our conversation.

The con­ver­sa­tion con­tin­ued around the con­cept of keep­ing short accounts with each other and God, mean­ing that if in the exam­ple,  the shop keeper and the cus­tomer wait to long between rec­on­cil­i­a­tions, some things are for­got­ten and or rela­tions are dam­aged and mis­trust ensues. Keep­ing a short account of our sins with God makes it eas­ier to keep a good rela­tion­ship with Him, wherein we can hear from Him clearly through His holy spirit daily, hour by hour.

“There­fore, if any­one is in Christ, he is a new cre­ation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ rec­on­ciled us to him­self and gave us the min­istry of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion; that is, in Christ God was rec­on­cil­ing the world to him­self, not count­ing their tres­passes against them, and entrust­ing to us the mes­sage of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion. There­fore, we are ambas­sadors for Christ, God mak­ing his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be rec­on­ciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the right­eous­ness of God.” (2 Corinthi­ans 5:17–21 ESV)