Ok… so, I like alliteration, sue me :) Although, I may need to change my “Friday” title to “Forgiveness Friday.” I’ve been spending an awful lot of time lately pondering forgiveness… We’ll see… I intend to post various faith posts on Fridays, just whatever I’ve been spending the week thinking about…
Forgiveness…
It’s HARD… I’m a fairly difficult person to actually offend… I do get my feelings hurt fairly easily, but those aren’t the things I’m taking about… I mean the big things. The things that come to help define who you are, THOSE kinds of forgiveness. It is easy to “understand” that forgiveness is good, and that carrying around the burden of non-forgiveness only serves to continue the hurt, and also give power to those that hurt you… But ACTUAL forgiveness can be elusive. I can go though several things that I am 100% sure that I have forgiven. Things that I believe I have dealt with and am done with. Then “Surprise!!” some completely random and unrelated comment by a completely unrelated party will bring it all back up again with a fury, and I’m thinking, “Crud!! I thought I was all done with that, and here it is again, I need to let that go”… and yet, there it is.
At our last Parish council meeting, we had a discussion of The Rule of St. Augustine, Chapter 9: Reconciliation. This line in particular struck me… “Whoever has injured another by open insult, or by abusive or even incriminating language, must remember to repair the injury as quickly as possible by an apology, and he who suffered the injury must also forgive, without further wrangling.”
First… I need to incorporate the phrase “without further wrangling” into my regular vocabulary… It’s a great line… :)
But seriously, I believe that I’m “ok” at apologizing… Maybe not great, but I do try to sincerely apologize when I need to, even if it was something said unintentionally… BUT “and he who suffered the injury must also forgive, without further wrangling.” Now, THAT (in my opinion) is the hardest part of the equation… And forgiving yourself for things may be even harder…
Something to think about and work on…
and a photo from my phone (my current phone home screen) from band camp last summer…
