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Viewpoint from Marion Ferrari  17/06/2022

Marion Ferrari
Part of Kingsgate Community Church GY and the Firehouse GY
 

I’ve been thinking about the F word recently. Forgiveness. I have heard the analogy that holding on to a grudge or refusing to forgive is like drinking poison and hoping the other person dies! I know that unforgiveness causes all sorts of mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical problems for the person who holds on to that hurt. We can be crippled by resentment, bitterness, hatred etc
 
Forgiveness didn’t seem that difficult until I was really hurt! It was really hard after a major trauma. Initially I had to be willing to forgive, not to wait for feelings but to decide to forgive. It was a process that I liken to a spiral, as each time the hurt was triggered I had to intentionally forgive and each time it went a bit deeper, and I got a bit freer and the memory gradually became less painful
 
In daily life hurts can build up, particularly in close relationships. Sometimes we are hurt or angry and the day continues and so it is buried without the recognition that it needs to be dealt with. This happened to me. The hurts gradually hardened into resentment, which led to an increasingly negative attitude to the person, depression, and a constant irritability (low level anger).  I denied it at first; resentment is ugly, but as Jesus said ‘the truth will set you free’. As I recognised it, was able to repent and forgive from the heart, I felt that hardness melt
 
I felt a joy knowing how much God had forgiven me. I know the Bible says “do not let the sun go down on your anger”, and that we need to keep short accounts, but these things had slipped under my radar, perhaps because I experienced them as ‘hurts’ rather than anger? I know I need to be more vigilant in the future to deal with feelings at the end of each day
 
 I hear people say “I can never forgive…”  What we may mean then, is that I don’t want to let that person off the hook. But we have been let off the hook by a God of forgiveness. Jesus tells the story of a servant deeply in debt, the king releases him from that debt, the servant then finds a fellow servant who owes him a fraction of the sum and throws him into prison until he can pay. He shows no mercy or appreciation of the mercy the king has shown him. The end of the story isn’t pretty! The message is clear, and underlined in the Lord’s prayer, “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us”       

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