Love Doesn't Remember Transgressions Done Against It

Wisdom Nugget : "...if you forgive others for the wrongs they do to you, then you...will also (be) forgiven your wrongs. But if you don’t forgive others, you will not (be) forgiven the wrongs you do.

Picture Credit: psychologytoday.com

Thomas Fuller said "He that cannot forgive others breaks the bridge over which he must pass himself; for every man has need to be forgiven."

As difficult as forgiveness might seem, it is for your own benefit, I have discovered that forgiveness is easier when i focus on "my own need for forgiveness", on a daily basis. Now, by human standards, I consider myself as decent and civil, but if as good as I am, I still need this amount of forgiveness daily, then I submit that any relationship, family, organization or community that does not make provision for plenty of forgiveness is brutish, barbaric and cruel.

 In "The Christian Leader," Don Ratzlaff retells a story. Vernon Grounds came across in Ernest Gordon's Miracle on the River Kwai. The Scottish soldiers, forced by their Japanese captors to labor on a jungle railroad, had degenerated into barbarous behavior, but one afternoon something happened. A shovel was missing. The officer in charge became enraged. He demanded that the missing shovel be produced, or else... When nobody in the squadron budged, the officer got his gun and threatened to kill them all on the spot . . . It was obvious the officer meant what he had said. Finally, one man stepped forward. The officer put away his gun, picked up a shovel, and beat the man to death. When it was over, the survivors picked up the bloody corpse and carried it with them to the second tool check. This time, no shovel was missing. Indeed, there had been a miscount at the first check point. The word spread like wildfire through the whole camp. An innocent man had been willing to die to save the others! . . . The incident had a profound effect. . . The men began to treat each other like brothers. When the victorious Allies swept in, the survivors, human skeletons, lined up in front of their captors (and instead of attacking their captors) insisted: "No more hatred. No more killing. Now what we need is forgiveness." Sacrificial love has transforming power.

If our marriages will work, if our houses will be homes, if our streets will be safer, if our communities will be inhabitable again, then we must both embrace and dispense forgiveness. Remember, "if you don’t forgive others, then you will not be forgiven the wrongs that you do."