This was the story of a woman who owned a plum orchard in the neighborhood of the Sisterhood’s
property. They had asked the woman if she would like to sell the land because they wanted to
expand and build a printing plant. No, she didn’t want to sell the land, because she had received it
as an inheritance, and she didn’t want to sell it. They went back and offered to trade it and went
back many times to see if she had changed her mind, but she was absolutely immovable. Their
whole program of expansion was sort of stymied, because that piece of property went right through
the middle of two pieces of property they had, so they were sort of like a separated country there,
with a channel down the middle that they couldn’t build upon.
One day, one of the Sisters went over there again after some time to see if perhaps the woman might
have changed her mind, and a little five-year-old boy met her at the door. It turned out to be the
grand-nephew of this woman. She wasn’t home, but he invited her in and asked if she would like to
see the house. She said all right since she hadn’t been in before and had always talked on the
outside. So she went into the house, and the little boy began to show her around. Finally, he came
and showed her the aunt’s bedroom. He opened the door, and the Sister took one look at the aunt’s
bedroom, and she said in an instant, it fell into place, and she knew what they were up against.
The room was crowded with enough furniture to furnish three houses, that one little bedroom. Over
on the bed, there were about 13 mattresses stacked on top of the bed and a step-ladder so that she
could climb up the ladder to get on the top mattress and sleep there. Why? Well, you see, she had
received all of these pieces of furniture from relatives who had died, and she had it in her mind that
it was a thoughtless and loveless thing to do ever to part with anything you received by inheritance – you had to use it all. Well, she had gotten 13 mattresses as an inheritance, you see, so she had to
use them all. She slept on top of the 13th one.
She realized then what they were facing. It was not simply that she did not want to part with the
property, but she was she was bound by the things of this earth in a terrible way. So she went back
and reported this to the Sisterhood.
Then, there was given into that group of young women, you see, with their two mothers as their leaders, an insight into this thing that we call Empathetic Repentance. Now there are three ways I suppose they could have dealt with this. They could have gone to the woman and preached her a sermon about the evils of bondage to the things of this earth and turned her off completely, or they could have been a little more subtle. They could have prayed about it and said, “God, change that hard heart that is bound by the things of the world. Lord, change that woman’s heart,” and prayed against her. Yet, there was a third way that the Lord revealed to them – the way of Empathetic Repentance, by which they went into a time of prayer and fasting in which they invited God to judge in their lives the very thing they saw in the life of this woman. You get the picture? Empathetic Repentance. In other words, instead of standing against the woman and judging her, they entered into the lists with her, and they said, “Lord, let us see in our life any hint of, any trace of, any evidence of the very thing that we see in her life.” Any psychiatrist would tell you that we have a great human tendency to project upon other people the very things that are really latent within ourselves and maybe hidden and piously covered over, and yet they’re there, and so they’re glaringly evident in the lives of others. They went into a time of fasting and prayer, and one by one, God began to touch the heart of these Sisters. Maybe it was a little thing like a postcard or something, for they had to give up everything as they came into the Sisterhood as part of the discipline. Some little thing that they had clung to, and in their heart they had said, “Lord, don’t take that away.” This was the cross to them – to have to give up some little thing that nobody else would ever know about, but God, who reads the heart, knew that there was a bondage there, and He touched these things one by one, and there came genuine repentance in that very area of their life that they saw was a problem for this woman. The interesting upshot of it was that the next time that Sister went back to speak with that woman, the woman began the conversation, before ever a question was raised, and said, “Well, you know, I really wouldn’t mind parting with the plum orchard, if I could still have the plums when they come into harvest.” So they were able to draw up a contract by which the yearly produce of the plum trees, which wouldn’t be affected by the building, would go to the woman year by year. You see, God entered into that situation and changed her heart with never a word having been spoken, simply because He found people who were willing to identify with her and bless her, instead of judge her and condemn her. Their own repentance became an avenue for them to extend forgiveness to her.