Marriage is a place where people have the most opportunities to practice living a life of forgiveness. There are more opportunities for cross words, bad attitudes, failed expectations, disappointments and general feelings of resentment. Since there are more opportunities for all these modes of hurt there are also more opportunities for forgiving. Every year that goes by new opportunities to learn lessons of forgiveness arise.
Martin Luther, the 16th Century reformer, once wrote about marriage and hurts: “Think of all the squabbles Adam and Eve must have had in the course of their 900 years.” Think about it 900 years! 900 years is a lot of history, a lot of hurt and pain and a lot of opportunity to practice forgiveness.
Can you imagine the conversations as they headed into disagreements or arguments? Every time and argument came up - Eve would say, “Hey we wouldn’t be in this mess if you hadn’t eaten that apple…this is your fault.”
Adam of course couldn’t let her get away with a comment like that. He would retort – “Hey, now don’t you blame this on me – you started it all - you gave it to me.”
Blaming has never been a weakness for humans. Instead blaming tends to be an underlying strength. The natural reaction of men and women is to blame and get hurt.
If each of us, who are married, would practice first and foremost choose and act to forgive – ALL human relationships would be different, history would be different and life today would probably be unrecognizable.
Forgive your spouse TODAY!
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