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The saying is true, 'to err is human but to forgive is divine.'

In recent years, concern for the environment has become an important

Part of everyday life for people who care about God's creation; those who realise that we could destroy this precious, but limited, earth if we are not careful from now on. Many of us try to preserve our resources by recycling items like glass, paper and cans instead of throwing them away and cluttering up our beautiful world. Our recycling newspapers make new products and may help to save the vast tracts of forests, the healing 'lungs' of our atmosphere. Although we are careful to re-use inanimate resources we seem to have developed a different attitude to human beings. Keen to save things, we can become slow in valuing people, especially those who have made wrong decisions, committed offences or have been led into damaging, anti-social ways. For example, current prevailing attitudes in 'the stop and search our Youth for carrying knives' can make it feel almost a crime to be a young person, or an asylum seeker, or a refugee. There is a speed to condemn young people to scrap heaps, forgetting that of all God's creation, people can become whole and renewed again more successfully than any product. People who fall are not only human but made in God's image just like the rest of us and, therefore, worthy of a second chance to make something of their lives.

According to Luke 7:48 Jesus meets someone whose way of life is common knowledge, a woman whose reputation scandalised the Pharisees with whom Jesus was sharing a meal. When she was seen entering the house they were shocked as much by her actual presence as by her action, which demonstrated a deep desire to be different, to change.

However, Jesus was concerned not with her bad name, which belonged to her past.

The Power of the Holy Spirit revealed the life of this lady to Jesus. In other wards, Jesus knew her past but he recognised the degree of love she expressed as she bathed his feet with her tears, such love he always rewards. Where Simon and the others considered the woman as soiled humanity, a lost cause, Jesus acknowledged her repentance and her readiness to become whole once more. Remade by his respect, renewed by his love and filled with his confidence in her to grow. It must have cost that woman a great deal to enter a private house and to behave in what was, especially then, an outrageous fashion. She risked everything to openly display her faith in Jesus.

Wahoo, what a faith that was!

She could not have been certain that Jesus would respond in the way he did but the 'Holy Spirit' told her that Jesus would be the key to her future life. She was not disappointed.

Time and again Jesus saw into the minds and hearts of those who approached him. He laid bare their truest thoughts and feelings, sometimes to their cost, in the case of his detractors. Most often he could see and understand the yearning for goodness and oneness with God, which lay behind a façade of sin or sickness. Since his own desire is for our 'life in abundance,' he always forgave the worst of sins and rewarded the supplicant with another chance.

We know that in doing so, Jesus gave us the perfect example of how to love each other, members of our family, community, our young people unconditionally.

Like Jesus, we need to look at what people can become and not simply what they have been. It is not always as easy as it sounds.

Forgiveness can be hard and takes courage, especially when others are condemning and we try to support the case of those who have fallen from grace.

However, we never know when we may be likely to need a second chance, the opportunity to become what we should be, regardless of our failures. To forgive and to be forgiven is to be cherished and valued, as God does. God's love not only prevents our lives being wasted, but makes them as good as new, even better than new for experience means growth into maturity.

At first we might think it a pity that the Gospel writer did not give us the woman's name. We could represent her as such a wonderful example of real faith and of what Jesus will do for better that she is not precisely identified because, as it is, she gave Jesus the chance to prove to the onlookers and us today that when we give without measure, so does Jesus.

I have recently learnt that many people are seeking God's forgiveness but they do not know how. The religious leaders in Jesus' contemporary believe that only God could forgive sins, so they wondered why this man Jesus was saying that the woman's sins were forgiven. They did not grasp the fact that Jesus was indeed God, That woman was forgiven. Jesus can forgive you your sins and set you free today. How?

When He, the Holy Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. (John 16:13).

The Holy Spirit was given to live inside those who believe in Jesus, in order to produce God's character in the life of a believer. In a way that we cannot do on our own, the Holy Spirit will build into our lives love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (Gal. 22-23). Rather than trying to be loving, patient, kind, God asks us to rely on Him to produce these qualities in our lives. Thus Christians are told to walk in the Spirit (Gal. 5:25) and be filled with the Spirit (Eph. 5:18). And the Holy Spirit empowers Christians to perform ministerial duties that promote spiritual growth among Christians (Rom 12; 1 Cr. 12; Eph. 4).

The Holy Spirit also performs a function for non-Christians as well. He convicts people's hearts of God's truth concerning how sinful we are needing God's forgiveness; how righteous Jesus is. He died in our place, for our sins; and God's eventual judgement of the world and those who do not know Him (John 16:8-11).

The Holy Spirit tugs on our hearts and minds, asking us to repent and turn to God for forgiveness and new life.

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