Forgiveness

Colossians 3:13
13 Make allowance for each other’s faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others.

Quotes

“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.” –Mahatma Gandhi

“Forgiving what we cannot forgive creates a new way to remember. We change the memory of our past into a hope for our future.” – Lewis Smedes

“To err is human; to forgive, divine.” – Alexander Pope

“There is nobility in compassion, a beauty in empathy, a grace in forgiveness.” –John Connolly

“Forgiveness is not an occasional act; it is a permanent attitude.” –Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Mistakes are always forgivable, if one has the courage to admit them.” –Bruce Lee

Reflection

I believe forgiveness is consistently missing within our culture and our personal lives as well. I firmly believe there are consequences to all decisions. However, I think we’re far too self-righteous to see that we’ve all made mistakes and are looking to hold people to standards we are unwilling to keep and reflect on. I’m guilty of portraying such things, so this is no indictment on anyone else, and that’s why I make it a point to practice forgiveness, even when I don’t feel like it.

There are two types of forgiveness that I believe most struggle with, myself included, which are forgiving others and forgiving ourselves. One of the most freeing sayings I live by and learned at a rather young age was that not everyone is going to like me. Simple yet, the statement gives me the freedom to forgive people who may think poorly of me, be it out of ignorance or a trivial matter of why they don’t like me. The hardest part of forgiving others, in my estimation, is when people we are close to hurt us deeply, which then results in the harder level of forgiving ourselves.