Forgiveness Factor
I'm still amazed at our audacity.
Our daughter had just been murdered. We were facing the press - the cameras and the lights were on us - and we just told them and everyone that we were going to "forgive."
To tell you the truth, we had no idea what it would look like to forgive something as soul destroying as murder.
But that was the best decision we ever made.
That word alone - challenged every inclination we had to work out our issues in a less than positive way. Sometimes we were successful in holding onto the concept, sometimes we weren't. But just wanting to forgive - seemed to open up all kinds of new thinking, new approaches and new energy.
Now I wish I could get up on top of a soap box the size of the moon and just declare to everyone and everything that "forgiveness is the answer." I might even want to enforce it, enshrine it, put it in our constitution.
But that would defeat the concept - it has to be chosen to have integrity.
Faith demands forgiveness.
Forgiveness demands faith.
They go hand in hand.
I had faith enough to choose forgiveness.
Now after years of testing this concept, I can say with confidence that it works. It's a very demanding, often misunderstood concept - but it is powerful.
A secondary outcome is that now that I'm confident in forgiveness. I have more faith in God - the originator and founder of the concept.
For God to have introduced this life saving, healing, power and grace of forgiveness to us - and shown us how to access it - makes him the redeemer, the savior and the Lord.
He is the shepherd that leads us to lie down in green pastures - of love, forgiveness, hope, and joy.
This is starting to feel like a merry-go-round so I'll stop here - I've written books on this subject.
“Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart.” Corrie Ten Boom
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