What I would like to share with you in two separate blogs, are two beautiful examples of forgiveness both centering on how we need to forgive. If we can’t forgive, like Jesus said in the Bible, how can we expect God to forgive us?
When I think about how sometimes we
must forgive regardless of the trespass, a story about Corrie ten Boom, a
holocaust survivor during World War II, comes to mind. She, her sister, Betsie
and her family had been imprisoned during the Nazi invasion of Holland for
hiding Jews.
As the story goes Corrie was
speaking on forgiveness in a church in Munich, Germany in 1947. She spoke of
forgiveness as this, “When we confess our sins, God casts them into the deepest
ocean, gone forever.”
After she had finished speaking it
was then that a man whose face she could not forget approached her. He was one
of the guards from Ravensbruck, the despicable concentration camp, where both Corrie
and Betsie had been taken after their arrest. It was there that he and the
other guards treated the sisters and many other countless Jews like animals. Many
like Betsie and countless others would die there due to the harsh conditions.
Since his time as a Nazi guard, he
had become a Christian and now was in search of this forgiveness that Corrie
had so freely offered just moments before.
Although, he did not remember her, she remembered him. He went on to say
that he knew God had forgiven him for the cruel things he did in the prison
camp, but he wanted to hear from her lips that he was forgiven. Then, he put
his hand out.
The following is what happened next
in Corrie ten Boom’s own words….
And I stood there—I whose sins had again and again to be
forgiven—and could not forgive. Betsie had died in that place—could he erase
her slow terrible death simply for the asking?
It could not have been many seconds that he stood there—hand
held out—but to me it seemed hours as I wrestled with the most difficult thing
I had ever had to do.
“For I had to do it—I knew that. The message that God
forgives has a prior condition: that we forgive those who have injured us. “If
you do not forgive men their trespasses,” Jesus says, “neither will your Father
in heaven forgive your trespasses.”
I knew it not only as a commandment of God, but as a daily
experience. Since the end of the war I had had a home in Holland for victims of
Nazi brutality. Those who were able to forgive their former enemies were able
also to return to the outside world and rebuild their lives, no matter what the
physical scars. Those who nursed their bitterness remained invalids. It was as
simple and as horrible as that.
And still I stood there with the coldness clutching my
heart. But forgiveness is not an emotion—I knew that too. Forgiveness is an act
of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the
heart. … “Help!” I prayed silently. “I can lift my hand. I can do that much.
You supply the feeling.”
And so woodenly, mechanically, I thrust my hand into the one
stretched out to me. And as I did, an incredible thing took place. The current
started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands. And
then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my
eyes.
“I forgive you, brother!” I cried, “With all my heart!”
For a long moment we grasped each other’s hands, the former
guard and the former prisoner. I had never known God’s love so intensely, as I
did then.
Remember,
you can’t drive forward in life, if you’re still looking backward in your
rearview mirror.
Swavel
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