Forgive One Another

Readings:
Psalm 34
Ephesians 4:25-32

Focus:
Ephesians 4:32: "Be generous to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you."

One of the hardest lessons I've learned, but one of the most liberating, is about forgiving others. I started thinking about this a number of years ago. I realized that in the Lord's Prayer, we pray, "Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us." In other words, we are asking for the same level of forgiveness that we offer. That's a bit daunting!

So I started working on being more forgiving, since, after all, I wanted God to forgive me. And I realized that I needed to forgive people who had wronged me, whether or not they were sorry. In fact, I needed to forgive them whether or not they even believed they had done anything wrong.

In a couple of difficult cases, I promised God that, even though I would probably not forget what happened, nevertheless, I would forgive the person, and I would never again think of those situations with anger or bitterness. And immediately I felt an influx of God's love and warmth. And in the ensuing days, weeks, months, and years, my relationship with that person was vastly improved, even though the person never knew what had happened.

I found that obeying God was, as I knew all along, the right thing to do. It was good to forgive as God in Christ had forgiven me.