Repenting… Forgiving… Forgetting

In moving through life we all tend to pick up some prejudices, some resentments, perhaps some sense of injury at times, some feelings that we have been offended. And sometimes we hug these hurts, real or imagined, close to our hearts. And when we feel that others have given offense, it isn’t always easy to forgive, and it may be even harder to forget — and perhaps still harder to concede that we ourselves may also have given others some feelings of offense. We all at times fall short of being at our best. We all say things that others may misjudge, may misinterpret: things we likely would not have said if we had taken second thought. And most people, all people, are sometimes preoccupied, and seem at times to slight others, to pass friends without thinking or seeing, or fail to give attention to something said. All of us have reason, if we would wish it, to misjudge all of us at times, to misjudge the motives, the intents, the hearts of other men. We are all of us human. We make mistakes. We do not always live to the best of what we know — all of which the Lord God understands — and for this He has given us the principle of repentance; an for this He has given us also another principle: the principle of forgiveness — a principle of such significance that our Savior said our offerings would be unacceptable until first we had reconciled ourselves with one another: “…if thou… rememberest that they brother hath ought against the; …first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer they gift.”¹ How can friends, family, neighbors, associates ever get back to any comfortable, livable relationships in life, if there isn’t a willingness to forgive and a willingness to forget, and a willingness also sincerely to repent for errors of the past? If all past offenses were forever remembered between two people, how could they ever get back to an understanding and livable relationship with each other? Thank God that ultimate justice and judgment are in the hands of Him who knows the minds and hearts and motives of all men — who knows us better than we know ourselves — and that, with the obligation to repent there is also blessedly the obligation to forgive — friends, family, and all with whom we live life.