Hello friends,
I was hoping to share some Easter thoughts, but time has not been on my side. On Good Friday morning, there were two good programmes on BBC 1, the second one at 10a.m. on the life of Jesus (which concluded today) but this first programme should be seen by everyone - regardless of what religion (or none) they are. It's so deep and profound and I just wish they had put it out in the evening so that more people had seen it:
"What's the point of forgiveness?"
Love and peace,
Judy
Hi Judy
Thanks for the link, you are right everybody should have a chance to watch this. There is a lot we can learn about Forgiveness
Love and Peace
Fran
Ah, I wish I could watch this, but it just comes up with the message "Not available in your area". Guess that's what one gets for living down under... 😉
Watched bits - quite good, 'forgiveness is a gift' - of course only we have the gift within us to actualise forgivness either against us or by us for deeds done.
In doing so we do not let others off-the-hook, we free ourselves from the prison that cages us up and which only forgivness can break.
love
chris
Yes Chris I like to remember that in the middle of for-give-ness is give - it is indeed a gift to ourselves!
Love and peace,
Judy
PS Charis - I'm sure if you wait long enough, it'll turn up down there! :p
Hi Chris
You are so right. We put ourselves in bondage by hanging on to unforgiveness and in the process destroy our own freedom
Yes, although I haven't yet had any situation in my life where I've been called on to forgive something apparently unforgivable, that's how I've come to think of it too. Forgiveness doesn't mean you condone the wrong that was done; it means you're no longer going to give that wrong any more power to hurt you.
I once read a deeply moving account of a Jewish woman whose parents were Holocaust survivors and a German woman whose father had been high up in the Nazi forces. The Jewish woman, Zella, had been brought up with relentless retellings of the brutality and murder inflicted on her family and people; the German woman, Helga, had only found out as an adult that her father had been directly responsible for the deaths of 40,000 men, women and children. She was completely shattered and racked with guilt, but she was determined to meet descendents of the victims and repent for her father's wrongs somehow. She joined a project for children of survivors to meet children of perpetrators, and there she met Zella. When it was Helga's turn to speak, she could barely get any words out. But Zella took her hand, and as Helga told her story, Zella said: "Helga, I'm here to say to Hitler, 'You failed. You're not going to succeed in getting me to hate Helga any more.'"
As Zella put it later, the only word that truly describes what happened is healing. She and Helga became best friends, and together founded an organisation to help descendents of Jews and descendents of Nazis to come together as they had and overcome that terrible legacy together. I've read a number of stories of forgiveness, but this one always stands out as one of the most moving.
All love, Charis