Back in the
1870’s Tom Davenport worked a large outfit of cowboys on his ranch in Brown’s
Hole, Wyoming. One of them, Edwin Howell, earned the nickname “Buckskin Ed”
because of his preference for pants made from that material. On a trip to town,
cleaned out in a local gambling den and needing a new pair of trousers,
Buckskin Ed sauntered into the local haberdashery, ordered and received a
complete new outfit, then strolled toward the door without paying. When the
shopkeeper protested, Buckskin Ed drawled, “Write it on the ice, and if it
don’t melt off I’ll pay you sometime maybe.” Dissatisfied with this method of
bookkeeping, the merchant peppered the retreating cowboy with double-barrels of
buckshot and regained his property. “Write it on ice” became a local proverb
meaning, “Forget about it.”[1]
While “write it
on the ice” might be a poor fiscal policy, it provides a pretty good motto for
Christian forgiveness.
Too often we
keep Job-accounts of sins against us, “Oh that they were graven with an iron
pen and lead in the rock forever,” (Job 19.24); yet we expect our own faults to
find no longer life than a finger-traced scrawl on a fogged car window. We
yearn to crack open the canon and add one more imprecatory prayer to the
psalter and call down curses on those who wrong us; yet assume that our own
trespasses will find a transitory testimony scratched into an ice cube under a
blazing summer sun.
Our Teacher, by
contrast, tells us that while we get to pick the pen and parchment of personal
moral accounting, we can keep only one set of books: “For if ye forgive men
their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if ye forgive
not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”
(Mt 6.14-15) The blood of Christ expunges the record of my wrongs but slops
over the entire scroll to blot out the crimes committed against me as well. We
have access to the Sharpee of justice or the erasable marker of grace but must
hand the same instrument to our creditors as well as our debtors.
If someone has
harmed you, write it on the ice. Otherwise, you may find that the buckshot of
bitterness blasts holes in your own buckskin breeches and leaves you standing
more holey than holy before the Great White Throne.
[1]Charles
Kelly, The Outlaw Trail: A History of
Butch Cassidy and His Wild Bunch, 2 ed. (New York: Bonanza, 1959), 79-80.
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