I was talking with friends recently about God’s forgiveness, and recalled one of my favorite passages from IMAGINE MEETING HIM:
“You couldn’t have been any farther east. You were burdened with an indefinable weight, unable to analyze it or get a grip on it or rid yourself of it. And no one could help you with it.
Until a man came and, taking your burden as if it weighed hardly anything, carried it up and across a range of mountains.
On his climb, a seductive woman, a woman called Justice, intercepted him. She reasoned with him, saying, ‘The one whose burden you carry doesn’t deserve your efforts. Lay down the weight, and stop your journey in the name of fairness.’
Your man kept going.
By and by he passed through a desert, traversing its barrenness for days on end. Under the scorching sun, a strapping young man called Reality 
approached him. ‘You’re carrying that heavy weight for someone who won’t even appreciate what you’re doing. Not only that, he won’t always relieve others of their burdens, even when given the chance. Let me take care of it for you right now. You won’t have to carry it any farther.’
Acknowledging the young man, your burden bearer nevertheless persevered. Soon he came upon a deep forest, so thick that sunlight could scarcely penetrate it. An old man with many years of experience in the world met up with him. The graybeard was called Restitution. ‘You,’ said the elderly man, ‘with that burden on your back. I see that you’re very determined, since you have made it this far. But realizing all the work this requires of you, you must go to the owner of this burden and make him pay for the relief you have provided.’
But the burden bearer passed through the forest without stopping.
Soon he came to the end of his journey. He had gone as far west as he 
possibly could. There he faced the deepest of oceans.
He removed your burden and threw it into the heart of that sea, where to this day it is still sinking.
“For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us” (Psalm 103:11-12).
“You will again have compassion on us; you will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea” (Micah 7:19).
[excerpt from Imagine Meeting Him, by Robert Rasmussen, 1998 Multnomah Publishers, pp. 169-170]
photo credit: unbelievablefacts.com
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