True forgiveness is hard. Oh, some may say, I forgive.But do they? The forgiver must be fit to forgive. It is not true forgiveness if you are not willing. And I am not talking about group forgiveness.
By that, I mean, it is not a group of people forgiving another person for an act of mass murder. This brings to mind all the shootings here in the United States where a gunman comes in and empties his gun on a group of students. Then the other students say they forgive him. No, that is false forgiveness. In that case the students who are alive don't have the right to forgive. The deed was not done to them.
You can only forgive a deed done against you personally. God forgives us because our deed, our sin, is toward Him.
It is easy for a person to ask for forgiveness and very hard for the other person to forgive. True forgiveness cannot be granted until the perpetrator has earned it.. by that I mean, he must confess, repent and do restitution. Every deed has a effect. Every deed leaves a footprint.
Forgiveness does not mean to forget what the other has done. You can forgive but not forget. Forgiveness is not based on forgetting. If you forget the same thing may happen again. Remember the slight so that you can be careful not to do that thing again.
But do your forgiveness with kindness. Don't seek to pay back in kind. We are not talking a tooth for a tooth here. We are talking allowing God to get into the picture and dispensing what needs to be dispensed.
More later.
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