Forgiving or Vindictive—Which Will You Be?
PERSONS “strong in their loves and friendships” are naturally as strong in their dislikes and resentments. Earnest, deep natures need to cultivate the grace of “not remembering injuries” and the gift of forgiveness. I say gift, for the ability to forgive an injury is a gift from God, given in answer to agonizing prayer. One may argue with one’s self and strive to crush out the “hateful” feeling, but until the Spirit helps, the bitterness still abides. Oftentimes one takes a pride in nursing the bitterness, vainly imagining it an evidence of firmness. No finer words were ever written for such persons than the following from Everybody’s:— “Nursing a Grudge: ‘Tending it, keeping it alive, nourishing it until it becomes a companion. What a foolish, reckless occupation! You probably know men right in your town who nurse grudges almost as big as they are, and show off the grinning things on every possible occasion, and apparently with great pride. Now a healthy soul can’t keep a grudge overnight. It forgets or forgives. Life is too sweet, too beautiful, to befoul with a nasty grudge, big or little. . . . A grudge doesn’t hurt anybody but the man who harbors it.’” “The writer goes on to advise that all who have grudges strangle them and bury them in unmarked graves, and it closes with these words: ‘Why will people make themselves wretched and keep themselves wretched when it is so beautiful to be happy and clean-hearted?’” Again, if we are to be judged by our thoughts and by our thoughts condemned, the nursing of grudges means condemnation for thoughts of our wrongs that do not minister to Christian living. Moreover, these bitter thoughts leave their impress on features, and we grow to look in harmony with our thinking, so that we mar our own visage with furrows of discontent and malice. What a good, comprehensive text to preach from:— “Thou who upon the waves of Galilee
Bade the wild waters bow to thy control,
And sink to softest ripples instantly,
Look with thy pitying eyes, O Friend most true,
Upon all human hearts so deeply stirred;
Hush their tumultuous passions and subdue
With ‘peace, be still’ each stormy thought and word.”