Incidentally, I really agree with those who say that the capacity to forgive says something about the essential quality of a person. I'm the lowest grade.''I didn't mean to criticize you.''I promise to be better in my next life...
...when you hate someone so much, a part of you wants desperately to forgive them. But you can't decide if it's because you really want, or if you just want to stop hating. I still don't know if forgiveness is generous or selfish. Maybe both.
Contemporaries relate that hearing Martin Luther pray was "an experience in theology". They said the reformer began praying with such humility that he could be pitied, only to proceed with such boldness before God that the human hearer would fear for him.
And we will mess up. We will hold on when we should have let go. We will walk away when we should have run. We will go when we should have stayed and we will hurt others when we should have loved. But God forgives, He forgets, and best of all, He restores.
How can you love those who have stolen from you, assaulted or abused you, or tried to blow you up and completely destroy you? How can you forgive those who have kidnapped, tortured and killed someone you love? Yet this is where reconciliation has to begin.
While the memory of guilt is far from pleasant (like 'wormwood and gall'), it has the curative intent of restoring us into an awareness of the constancy of God's love, new every morning. God's mercy is not spent even with our worst misdeeds.
I think sometimes when we grew up with a parent who is deeply flawed....we learn, subconsciously at least, to expect the worst from everyone else as well....Fortunately, it doesn't have to be that way forever. We can learn to see with new eyes if we try.
I guess we'll never know exactly what ... the reasons behind the losses we experience in this life. But being angry doesn't make them any less devastating. It only robs us of the happiness and love we can experience. Only forgiveness can set us free.
Love, not anger, brought Jesus to the cross. Golgotha came as a result of God's great desire to forgive, not his reluctance. Jesus knew that by his vicarious suffering he could actually absorb all the evil of humanity and so heal it, forgive it, redeem it.
Feeling bad is not the problem.The problem is that we feel bad about feeling bad.Once you begin to let go of feeling bad about feeling bad,and start feeling better about feeling bad,then pretty soon you'll just feel better.And then you'll feel awesome.
What he did was wrong. He doesn't deserve your love. But he does deserve your forgiveness, because otherwise he will grow like a weed in your heart until it's choked and overrun. The only person who suffers, when you squirrel away all that hate, is you.
Forgiving other people does not mean that they will get away with what they did to you, it means that You are set free from the pain they have caused you. Forgiveness is the hardest lesson we are here to learn to master, but it is possible with time and patience.
Forgive me, Magnus.’‘I don’t know if I can.’‘You must.’Still looking into the distance, he said, ‘You need my forgiveness?’‘No. I’m dead. You can do nothing for me. You need to forgive me so you can live.
God can make a new beginning with people whenever God pleases, but not people with God. Therefore, people cannot make a new beginning at all; they can only pray for one. Where people are on their own and live by their own devices, there is only the old, the past.
With friends, if you keep making an effort to reach out and you keep getting hurt, you eventually stop trying. But it's much harder to give up on family. Somewhere deep down you want it to work so badly that you keep making the same mistake over and over again.
