Forgive, forget and be forgiven

Forgiveness (Photo credit: Celestine Chua)

Do you bear a grudge against someone who has hurt you or offended you in any way? Perhaps a partner or a friend has let you down and you cannot find it in your heart to forgive them? Think about what is going on here, who is suffering? Are you happy and at peace through vengeance or do your thoughts give no consideration to the matter? Here is an article, one of which I receive every day, which touches on this subject. It doesn’t matter that you are not a Christian, though the article is written for those who are, the same principle applies to anyone.

05 Jul 2014
Forgive, for Your Own Sake!
‘…Forgive as the Lord forgave you.’ COLOSSIANS 3:13
A lady writes: ‘I found my husband with another woman. Although he begged me for forgiveness, I wanted my pound of flesh, so I filed for divorce even though our kids asked me not to. Two years later my husband was still trying to get me back, but I wanted none of it. He’d hurt me and I wanted revenge. Finally he gave up, married a young widow with two children, and rebuilt his life without me. They’re all so happy and I’m just a lonely, miserable woman, who let bitterness ruin her life.’ Now there’s no question that infidelity is wrong. But without forgiveness, what’s left? There’s a point at which anger stops being a healthy emotion and becomes a driving force. Like a drug, you need larger and larger doses. Once that happens, you move even further from forgiveness, because without anger you’ve no energy at all. It’s what drives hate groups and extremists. Without bitterness they’ve no reason to exist. If you take bigotry from the racist, revenge from the zealot and chauvinism from the sexist, what’s left? ‘Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.’ Bitterness is fatal; it kills your soul. So how can you stop yourself from becoming bitter when you’ve been hurt? a) By looking into the face of the person who hurt you and seeing, instead, the face of the One who showed you mercy when nobody else would have given you another chance. b) By realising that before the day, the week, the month or the year is out, you’ll be needing mercy yourself.

“Forgiveness” by Carlos Latuff. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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Shirley Anne