DAILY BYTE
At the end of her book ‘The Hiding Place’, Corrie Ten Boom tells of her struggle to forgive a guard from the death camp where she had been imprisoned during the Second World War:
“It was a church service in Munich that I saw him, the former SS Man who had stood guard at the shower room door in the processing centre at Ravensbruck. He was the first of our actual jailers that I had seen since that time. And suddenly it was all there – the roomful of mocking men, the heaps of clothing, Betsie’s pain-blanched face.
He came up to me as the church was emptying, beaming and bowing. “How grateful I am for your message Fraulein,” he said. “To think that, as you say, He has washed my sins away!” His hand was out to shake mine. And I, who had preached so often to the people in Bloemendaal the need to forgive, kept my hand at my side.
Even as the angry, vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for this man; was I going to ask for more? Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him. I tried to smile, I struggled to raise my hand. I could not. I felt nothing, not the slightest spark of warmth or charity. And so again I breathed a silent prayer. Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me Your forgiveness.
As I took his hand the most incredible thing happened. From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me. And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world’s healing hinges, but on his. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself.”
Dale Carnegie once said that: “When we hate our enemies we give them a power over us – a power over our sleep, appetites, and happiness. Our hate is not hurting them at all, but it is turning our days and nights into turmoil.”
Lewis Smedes put it this way: “The first and only person to be healed by forgiveness is the person who does the forgiveness…When we genuinely forgive; we set a prisoner free and then discover that the prisoner we set free was us.”
This is why the concept of forgiveness is so central to the Lord’s Prayer, because it is absolutely central to the Christian faith. It is central to the very heart of God, and therefore it is central to life itself.
The only person we truly punish through a lack of forgiveness is ourselves! Yet, there is also no doubt that when we find it difficult to forgive, we need God’s love to give us enough strength to do so.
Spend some time thinking more directly about the people you are struggling to forgive. Write their names down for use in the following prayer.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Lord, as difficult as it may be for us, we do desire to forgive. We understand how a lack of forgiveness imprisons us, twists us and diminishes our spirits. We pray that you would help us to forgive [NAME/S]. Help us to let go of all anger, hurt or bitterness directed towards that person for what they have done to us. In the name of the Great Forgiver - Jesus. Amen.
FOCUS READING
Mark 2:7
Who can forgive sins but God alone?
