FORGIVING

Refusing to forgive another for hurting me is like drinking poison and expecting my "enemy" to die.  Forgiving that person, on the other hand, is simply letting go and letting God deal with that person as He chooses.  God bought that right when He forgave me.  So, I give up what I thought was my "right" to hold onto a grudge to the only One who actually owns that right.  I give up my "right" to hurt you for hurting me.  In such release lies genuine freedom.

Forgiveness is NOT amnesia.  preachers who say, "Forgive and forget," don't have a clue.  You'll never completely forget the offense against you.  Joseph hadn't forgotten his brothers' infractions.  But he'd most certainly forgiven them.  He treated them as though they had never hurt him.  Even the Holy Spirit had not forgotten David's "matter with Uriah the Hittite" hundreds of years after it's occurrence.  Yet, that same Holy Spirit calls David a man after God's own heart.

Forgiveness is practicing purposefully selective memory.  I have a "booklet" in my mind entitled "How to Ride a Bicycle".  It's on the fifth floor, far corner, top shelf, collecting dust and cobwebs.  I have another book entitled Ways Folks Have Hurt Me.  It needs to be up there on the fifth floor with the bicycle booklet.  BUT, too frequently in my life, that insidious volume lies open on the table right at the front door of the library of my mind, dog-eared, highlighted, underlined, read and re-read multiple times each day.  How will I ever heal, if I continue to pour over the pages of this horror story?  I MUST choose to let it go.

Forgiveness is NOT stamping an approval upon what the other person has done to me.  It will not always result in an immediate restoration of the relationship to its former state.  If one of my daughters had ever dated an abusive young man, I could, by God's grace have forgiven him.  I could NOT, nor would I have ever encouraged my daughter to date him again.  NEVER.

Forgiveness is, in its simplest terms, refusing my tendency to play God.  He is Judge.  I am not.  He settles the score, here or hereafter.  I cannot.  He is God. I am most certainly not.  It helps to remind myself of that, especially when someone has hurt me.