If
we can find forgiveness in our hearts for those who have caused us hurt and
injury, we will rise to a higher level of self-esteem and well-being. Says Elder James E. Faust of the Second
Counselor in the first Presidency.
Day by day we share a good laugh, put a smile on someone else’s face, and ask for strength to conquer our daily challenges. How often do we say “I forgive you” and “I love you”, to those who hurt us? As Brothers and Sisters we all have stories to tell on who hurt us, when and how. Sadly we continue to laugh though we don’t forget but we treat them with kindness to heal our wounds and to love them more.
Dr. Sidney Simon, a recognized authority on values realization, has provided an excellent definition of forgiveness as it applies to human relationships: Forgiveness is freeing up and putting to better use the energy once consumed by holding grudges, harbouring resentments, and nursing unhealed wounds. It is rediscovering the strengths we always had and relocating our limitless capacity to understand and accept other people and ourselves.”
All of us suffer some injuries from experiences
that seem to have no rhyme or reason. We cannot understand or explain them. We
may never know why some things happen in this life. The reason for some of our
suffering is known only to the Lord. But because it happens, it must be
endured. President Howard W. Hunter said that “God knows what we do not know
and sees what we do not see.”
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| Don't get stuck in the past, set your self free from your burdens of pain. |
A father and his son lived together, the teenage
was known as a person who bottle things up to himself and get angry with himself,
with his father, and start questioning Heavenly Father for the pain and all the
emotional suffering he was going through. One day his father said to him, “son
every time you get angry, take a nail and a hammer and nail down that nail on
the wooden wall in our yard.” The son did so for half a year. As the wall was
stuck up with nails and its beauty could no longer be recognised, the father
asked his son to take out the nails one by one. Taking the nails out was harder
than putting them in. By the time he was done he was tired and the wooden wall
was left with holes and it looked ugly. Moral of the story is, it is easier to
be angry at another person and when we are angry we damage ourselves mentally,
emotionally mostly spiritually. Anger only brings bitterness and loneliness.
I pray that we may speak the same
language, and not just English, but a language of caring, a language of
community, and a language of service. And, yes, a language of forgiveness.
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