A story tells of two friends who were walking through the desert. During some point of the journey, they had an argument, and one friend slapped the other one in the face. The one who got slapped was hurt, but without saying anything, she wrote in the sand:
"TODAY MY BEST FRIEND SLAPPED ME IN THE FACE"
They kept on walking, until they found an oasis, where they decided to take a bath. The one who had been slapped got stuck in the mire and started drowning, but her friend saved her. After she recovered from the near drowning, she wrote on a stone:
"TODAY MY BEST FRIEND SAVED MY LIFE"
The friend, who had slapped and saved her best friend, asked her, "After I hurt you, you wrote in the sand, and now, you write on a stone, why?"
The other friend replied: "When someone hurts us, we should write it down in sand, where the winds of forgiveness can erase it, but when someone does something good for us, we must engrave it in stone, so no wind can ever erase it."
LEARN TO WRITE YOUR HURTS IN THE SAND AND TO CARVE YOUR BLESSINGS IN STONE.
I've been working on forgiveness a lot lately and at times the whole concept is hard to wrap my mind around because forgiveness is not condoning the behavior, it is not forgetting what happened, it is not restoring trust in that person (trust is earned), it is not agreeing to reconcile, and of course it is not easy.
To forgive is to recognize that the wrong done against us is a debt of sin, and all sin is against God. Therefore, in forgiving, we are transferring the debt from our ledger of accounts to God's leaving all recompense in His hands. Forgiveness is to no longer hold that anger of what another person has doen to us inside. And I think it is important to remember that we all sin and that is what God sent his one and only Son on Earth for.
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