How many times …?  What are the limits of love?  Can love be measured?  These questions lie behind Peter’s query about forgiveness. He obviously considers seven a most generous number since it echoes God’s words through the prophet Amos, ‘For three transgressions and for four, I will not revoke the punishment.’ (2:1). Jesus replies with an incalculable number ‘seventy times seven’. Forgiveness, like love, has no limits.  This week’s parable sets up the measuring stick for Christian love and this measure is that of the generous, forgiving master. From the experience of God’s extraordinary generosity we ought to be able to be generous in our turn. The servant in the parable forgot his experience of being forgiven and focussed only on his being wronged. Christians need to be people with long memories, able to recall the times they have failed and been forgiven, and from this place reach out in forgiveness of others. Remembering that we fail again and again and again might enable us to forgive ‘seventy times seven’.