Forgiveness, Letting Go, and Chocolate

Chocolate is awesome. It sits on your tongue and explodes in your mouth. It wets the appetite for more.

When you’re hurt, the last thing you want is more. You want revenge.

Chocolate slides down your throat and into your stomach sending endorphins into your brain to make you feel better.

Getting hurt never leaves you asking for more. Instead, you want to hurt the person that hurt you. People seek revenge, nations seek war, more people die.

Since tomorrow is September 11, 2012, I thought we’d discuss forgiveness and leave the chocolate for later. I mean who doesn’t love chocolate, except my grandson, Josh. He likes vanilla, which I’ve never understood.

We are broken people born into a broken world. In this life, people hurt us and we hurt others—sometimes intentionally and sometimes not. Yet without a moral high ground, we are nothing more than animals. We are commanded to forgive, but we are not commanded to forget. Trust must be earned again.  

Tomorrow, we are reminded of those who were lost. Yet, how can we forgive?

Forgiveness is a choice. A resolve we must make. This does not mean we demean the memory, forget the pain, and refuse to go on. We make the choice to forgive in order to set ourselves free from the anguish that encompasses us.

We must relinquish the desire for justice. God said that we are never to pay back evil with more evil. We do not take revenge but leave that to the righteous anger of Him who created us.

If your enemies are hungry, feed them. If they are thirsty, give them water to drink. Do not let evil conquer you, but conquer evil by doing good.

As long as you keep score—there is no forgiveness.

What then do we do?

Pray for those who hurt us. Make allowance for each other’s faults. Forgive those because you are forgiven.

Like chocolate, revenge can become addictive. It enslaves the soul and the heart. If we are to walk in the shoes of Jesus, we must remember where His ended. Our God is a just God, one who commands us to do no wrong. Justice and revenge belong to Him, and on this day, remembering that and putting into action His commandments is, and will always be, the hardest thing we, as a nation, have ever done.

I’m just a writer of tales, books that take your mind off your troubles if only for a time. It can be hard to remember that the pilots of those planes were misguided souls. Killing people in the name of religion is insane. They were sold a bill of goods that said the taking of innocent lives glorifies God.

Most of us are self aware enough to know that killing doesn’t glorify God. It turns us back into the animals from which we came.

It is time to make the choice to forgive. Maybe we need to start small; perhaps a family member or friend, and work up from there. It isn’t easy, because when we’ve been hurt we tend to lash out at the one who hurt us.

So, just for today and maybe tomorrow, pick out one person you find it hard to forgive and give it a shot.

I have.

So too, can you.

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