Everyone wants it, everyone needs it, but giving it to others is not so easy. I am referring to forgiveness; something that everyone needs but is often hard to extend to someone who has wronged us.
If we live life, it is inevitable that we will be hurt or let down by others as surely as we will hurt or let down the people around us. How we respond to this pain is as critical to the relationships we have with those around us as it is to our own mental, physical and spiritual health. Someone once described unforgiveness as ‘drinking a deadly poison and expecting the other person to die’. Unforgiveness is more damaging to the one holding it, than to those it is aimed at
Some see forgiveness as the end of a journey, that forgiveness comes through time. Others, more accurately in my experience, see it as the start of a journey; deciding to forgive being the start of a path that may one day lead to reconciliation.
Many of us will have seen the infamous picture of the nine-year-old, Vietnamese girl running naked, arms thrown out in agony, her face caught in a contorted wail, skin burning following a napalm strike in 1972. An image that is hard to forget. Some twenty plus years later, Kim Phuc, stood before the soldiers who had rampaged through her home country and expressed forgiveness for what they had done,
“I am not involved in politics or religion. I just let them know it’s about the love of God and the love of people. That is more powerful than any weapon of war.”
Forgiveness was at the start of her journey.
As this magazine arrives, we will be approaching Easter, when Christians in the village and around the world gather to mark God’s forgiveness through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In turn, we are commanded to forgive others.
Ephesians 4:32 says, ‘Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other just as Christ has forgiven you.’ … that’s a high standard and not an easy task but this is the focus of Easter an act of forgiveness, given out of pure love and taking no account of whether those being forgiven deserve it, understand it, or accept it.
This Easter, amidst all the chocolate eggs and bunnies, take a moment if you need to forgive someone, to do just that and stop taking the poison that is unforgiveness, they may never know but you will be so much better for it.