Live Your Blessing February 21, 2026 Devotional

EPHESIANS 4:31-32 | ³¹ Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice. ³² Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.

Dave Peterson has a wonderful image to help us picture the power of forgiveness. Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system. If all the other planets were made into a single stellar object, Jupiter would still be 250% larger! Its enormous gravitational field, due to its gigantic mass, pulls meteors, meteorites, and asteroids into its orbit. Jupiter absorbs these potentially destructive elements, preserving earth from what could be cataclysmic consequences.

Forgiveness, he notes, “absorbs into itself things that kill and destroy.” We can be small Jupiters, slow to condemn and criticize and fast to forgive, tucking into our “gravitational fields” life’s broken elements. When we do we resemble Him of whom John the Baptist said, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”

What do you make of this analogy?

Gracious God,

Help me be a small Jupiter within my family, my neighborhood, my church, and wherever I work. I ask in the name of Jesus, the Lamb of God.

Amen.