Search This Blog

Sunday, October 25, 2009

Forgiveness - Corrie ten Boon

Corrie ten Boon is a famous Christian author who lived through the concentration camps of World War II. Many of her family died in the death camps. Corrie lived to travel the world speaking to people about Jesus and the power of forgiveness. The Hiding Place is a powerful book that chronicles portions of her life.

Here is one event from her life about the power of forgiveness:
Corrie ten Boom told of not being able to forget a wrong that had been done to her. She had forgiven the person, but kept rehashing the incident and couldn’t sleep. She asked the Lord to help her put the problem behind her:
“His help came in the form of a kindly Lutheran pastor to whom I confessed my failure after two sleepless weeks.”
“Up in the church tower,” he said, nodding out the window, “is a bell which is rung by pulling on a rope. But you know what? After the sexton lets go of the rope, the bell keeps on swinging. First ding, then dong. Slower and slower until there’s a final dong and it stops. I believe the same thing is true of forgiveness. When we forgive, we take our hand off the rope. But if we’ve been tugging at our grievances for a long time, we mustn’t be surprised if the old angry thoughts keep coming for a while. They’re just the ding-dongs of the old bell slowing down.”
“And so it proved to be. There were a few more midnight reverberations, a couple of dings when the subject came up in my conversations, but the force — which was my willingness in the matter — had gone out of them. They came less and less often and at the last stopped altogether: we can trust God not only above our emotions, but also above our thoughts.”
Choose to forgive and the ‘ding-dongs’ of the hurts will slowly fade away. You will find healing.

Sunday, October 11, 2009

Forgiveness - A vaste subject

Forgiveness is a big subject. A church could teach on the subject of forgiveness every week and still be very relevant and applicable because not a day or week goes by that almost everyone of us are hurt, disappointed, let down, betrayed, etc… by someone else. Not a day or week goes by without each one of us hurting, disappointing, letting down, betraying or etc… others. There is no shortage of a need for forgiveness to be extended.

Someone has defined forgiveness as giving up the desire for a preferred past. That is an interesting way to look at life. “Giving up the desire for a preferred past.” We each have a desire in some ways for a preferred past. There are things that I wish I had never done. I have regrets about things that I did and how I know that I hurt God and hurt others. I also have regrets about things that happened to me at the hand of those I knew and that happened at the hands of those I didn’t know. I know that I have been forgiven by God and others and that I have forgiven others for wrongs. Even though I have regrets I don’t allow those regrets to consciously alter or impact my life today.

The power of forgiveness is that I don’t have to be controlled or impacted by the ways that I harmed others in my past and that I don’t have to allow anyone or any previous hurt to control or impact my present or my future. I am free because I have been forgiven by God and others and I am free because I have forgiven others.

It is difficult in the moment of pain and in the ‘wake’ of having been hurt to understand the power that can be released in a person’s life when they choose to receive God’s forgiveness and to forgive those who have hurt them. When a person is forgiven and forgives the power of the grace of God is released.

Someone else has said: To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover the prisoner was YOU.

Begin the process today – Choose to forgive. Become the prisoner that is set free by choosing and acting on that choice.

Thursday, October 8, 2009

Forgiveness - Clara Barton

Forgiving and forgetting are not the same thing. Sometimes we forgive and we do forget. Other times we forgive and yet the memory still lingers for a while. Other times we forgive and yet there are things that continually remind us of the past, past relationships and people that hurt us.

What we do with the memories is what is important. Will we use the memories to ‘get even’ with the other person or someone else? Will we use the memory to feed our sorrow and dysfunction? Will we do the healthy thing and by forgiving turn the memory into a thing of the past that will have no control over our present?

Clara Barton, the founder of the American Red Cross, was reminded one day of a vicious deed that someone had done to her years before. As someone tried to get her to remember the incident she acted as if she had never even heard of the incident.

“Don’t you remember it?” her friend asked.
“No,” Barton replied, “I distinctly remember forgetting it.”

What will we do with our memories?

Someone has said: One of God’s better jokes is the ability to remember the past without the capability of undoing it.

Clara Barton was not saying that she forgot but that she was not going to dwell on the offense. It was not going to come up again. It was not going to control her. She was not going to use it to ‘get even’ with someone. As far as she was concerned – the past is the past is the past.

Let’s learn to ‘distinctly remember forgetting’ those things that we’ve forgiven.