There is an
extraordinary true story about a woman called Corrie Ten Boom, a
Protestant living in Holland during the Second World War. She
lived with her sister and father and they used to read the bible
every evening after dinner. During the war as Holland was
occupied by the Nazis and Jewish people began disappearing, they
ended up hiding people in their home, although they didn’t set out
to do this. Eventually they were caught and sent to one of the
Concentration camps in Germany called Ravensbruck. Her sister
and father both died there, but she survived and was eventually
released. When she returned home she began working to help the
many people who were so hurt by the war. And she felt above all
that God was calling her to speak about the need for forgiveness.
And so she did, and she was invited to speak all over the country and
in other countries. While speaking in Germany one day, a man
came up to her after her talk and thanked her for this message of
forgiveness. He said, ‘It is good to know that
Jesus forgives all our sins.’ She recognised him as one of
the SS officers who had been in charge of their prison. As he
extended his hand to her, she found herself freezing up and unable to
respond. But she realised that if she did not forgive this man
who was responsible for the death of her sister and father, all her
preaching would be meaningless. So she found herself praying to
God on the spot asking him to forgive this man for her and finally she was able to put out her hand to him. (The book is called
The Hiding Place).
She wrote:
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.
One of the hardest things that any of us are faced with is
trying to forgive people who have hurt us. Very often the
people who hurt us the most are the people closest to us. When
people say to me that they are angry with someone, it nearly always
indicates that they need to forgive that person. Let me try and
clear up a few misconceptions about what forgiveness is and is not.
First of all
forgiveness is a decision of the will, as opposed to something we
feel like doing. Most of us rarely feel like forgiving someone
and if we were to wait until we actually felt like it, we would
probably not forgive at all. When I forgive someone I make a
decision to forgive that person because the Lord is asking me to, not
because I feel like it. The reason why it is so important to do
that is because when we forgive someone we open up the door to God’s
grace to help us begin to heal. If I refuse to forgive
someone I am blocking God from helping me to heal from the hurt.
We are the ones who suffer, not the person we are angry with.
We may think that if I say I forgive someone I am saying that it was ok for them to do what they did. When we forgive we are not saying that,
or that we no longer mind, or that the hurt is all gone. But
when we refuse to forgive someone, we are the ones who suffer.
The anger, hurt and resentment eats away at us inside. It is a
terrible thing to meet people late in their life who have continually
refused to forgive. You can see the bitterness in them and they
are a sad sight to see. None of us want to end up like that.
The good thing is that it is never too late to forgive.
It is easy to
think that if I don’t forgive someone they will go on suffering
because of what they did. The truth is that they may not even
be aware of it any more. We are the ones who suffer. We
are the ones who lose out. The first step in the process of
healing from the hurt is to make the decision to forgive them and say the words. ‘Lord I forgive this person because you ask me to.’ It doesn’t mean that everything
will suddenly be alright, or that we will suddenly love that person.
In fact we may need to say those words again and again, but
slowly we begin to heal.
Another
thought is this: We know that we all make mistakes and do wrong.
I’m quite sure that all of us expect and hope that God will forgive
us, but Jesus was very clear that we also need to forgive others if
we expect to be forgiven ourselves. Jesus gave some very strong
stories about people who refused to forgive, finishing with the
words: ‘And that is how my heavenly Father will treat you unless
you each forgive your brother from the heart’ (Matthew 18:35). In another place Jesus says:
‘If
you come to the altar to make your offering and there remember that
your brother has something against you. Go and be reconciled
with your brother first. Then come and make your offering’
(Matthew 5:23-24).
Finally,
remember that lady I mentioned at the beginning, Corrie Ten Boom.
When she was faced with having to forgive the man responsible for the
death of her sister and father, she found it nearly impossible, but
she prayed for the grace and it was God who enabled her to do it.
By our own strength it is often nearly impossible to forgive, but
that is where we turn to the Lord and ask him to help us, and He
does.
Forgive us our trespasses
As we forgive those who trespass against us…
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