A young boy by the name of Timmy was in the garden filling in a hole when his neighbor looked over the fence and asked him what he was doing. "My goldfish died," Timmy replied tearfully, "and I've just buried him." The neighbor was concerned. "That's an awfully big hole for a goldfish, isn't it?" Timmy carefully patted down the last heap of earth and then said, "That's because he's inside your cat."

Ah, revenge, how sweet it is. How just and right. For when we've been wronged, there is a debt, and someone must pay.

Revenge is a natural response to being wronged. Yet as Christians we are called to a new kind of response. A response called forgiveness. A response modeled by our Lord Jesus Christ and required of his followers.

Forgive us our sins, we pray, as we forgive those who sin against us.

As we forgive.

In the Lord's Prayer, as well as in the story we read, it is clear that our being forgiven is tied closely with our forgiveness of others. If indeed we have received the forgiveness of Christ, we must share it.

But, it’s not easy, is it? Lewis Smedes, who has written 2 best selling books on forgiveness says, "Forgiving seems almost unnatural. Our sense of fairness tells us people should pay for the wrong they do. But forgiving is love's power to break nature's rule." (Forgive and Forget, xvi)

Let's explore this power that can break nature's rule. This thing called forgiveness.

Our journey to forgiveness begins with the recognition that, no matter how much we don’t want to hurt each other, we will hurt each other—by accident, by intent, by ignorance. It’s a part of being human. Even in the church, we will hurt each other. Here’s how one insightful person starts her day off with prayer: Dear God, so far today, I have done all right. I have not gossiped, and I have not lost my temper. I have not been grumpy, nasty, or selfish, and I am glad of it! But in a few minutes, Lord, I am going to get out of bed, and from then on, I am probably going to need some help. Thank you. Amen. (parables, etc. 17.4.1)

The German philosopher Schopenhauer compared the human race to a bunch of porcupines huddling together on a cold winter’s night. He said, "The colder it gets outside, the more we huddle together for warmth; but the closer we get to one another, the more we hurt one another with our sharp quills. And in the lonely night of earth’s winter eventually we begin to drift apart and wander out on our own and freeze to death in our loneliness." Christ has given us an alternative: to forgive each other for the pokes we receive. That allows us to stay together and stay warm. (Fresh illustrations, 135)

On both sides of the forgiveness equation, it helps to know that we’re all human. And that means that sooner or later, all of us are going to need that miracle called forgiveness.

Any time a hurt happens to you, a crisis is initiated. A wrong was done by someone else, but you are left holding the bag of hurt. It’s not fair, but it’s real. You are faced with the question of what to do with the pain.

What do you do, if forgiveness is your destination? You hold the wrongdoer accountable for what he or she did. It’s not forgiveness if you just slough it off and say, oh, it was nothing. It wasn’t nothing. It was hurtful. It was unfair. The person needs to be held accountable. By saying that I don’t mean that you necessarily have to confront the person. Sometimes that is exactly what you need to do, but other times it’s not feasible or practical. Maybe the person has moved halfway around the world, or has died. Or the person has no interest whatsoever of patching things up or apologizing. The place where you hold the person accountable is in your heart. You can do the work of forgiveness whether the person apologizes or not. Whether the person knows a wrong was done. Or not. Whether the person cares. Or not. It’s tough to accept, but we need to understand that sometimes people are just plain insensitive to the fact that their actions have hurt someone else.

For instance, a pollster was taking opinions outside the United Nations building. He approached four people waiting to cross the street: A Saudi, a Russian, a North Korean and a New Yorker. He asked, "Excuse me, I would like to ask you your opinion on the current meat shortage." The Saudi replied, "Excuse me, but what is a shortage?" The Russian said, "Excuse me, but what is meat?" The North Korean said, "Excuse me, but what is an opinion?" And the New Yorker said, "Okay, I give up, what is ‘excuse me’?" (parables, etc. 17.9.5)

Some people are fenceposts – insensitive, unaware. The good news is that you can forgive someone whether they take responsibility for their actions or not. Because forgiveness is something that happens in you.

Once you’ve acknowledged that the bag of hurt belongs to you, even though the wrong was done by someone else, you need to take a little trip to the dark side of your soul. The place where anger and rage and even hate sometimes live. Hate can be either passive or aggressive. In a passive kind of hatred you will not seek revenge, but you will not wish the person well either. Hate becomes more aggressive when you actively hope that the person suffers, and even want to help that suffering along. If you deny that you have such dark feelings and desires, you will get stuck in the mud on the road to forgiveness. You will find yourself mired in the muck and not even AAA can pull you out. You will be unable to live happily and fully. But if you face the feelings and acknowledge them, at least to yourself and God, then they can be a part of the healing process.

Hateful feelings are normal and you need to face them, but on the other hand, if you stay in them, they will kill you. It’s kind of like morphine. A little helps you through the pain, but if you keep taking it, it will take you. You have to move on through to the healing.

"If you cannot free people from their wrongs and see them as the needy people they are, you enslave yourself to your own painful past, and by fastening yourself to the past, you let your hate become your future. You can reverse your future only by releasing other people from their pasts." (Smedes, 29)

That doesn’t mean that you will forget what happened. As one wise person said, "The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naïve forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget." (psychiatrist Thomas Szasz). To forgive someone does not mean that you need to become their doormat, to be repeatedly stepped on. It’s healthy, for instance, to forgive someone who has abused you. It’s not healthy to stay within that person’s reach if the abuse continues.

When you forgive the person who did you wrong, the hurt and the hate are healed. Forgiveness does not change the past. But it changes how you view the past. You are able to let the pain go and move on. You can breathe again. Laugh again. Love again.

How do you know when the miracle has happened? When you have truly forgiven someone? It happens when you genuinely begin to wish that person well. You no longer daydream about them getting hit by a truck or getting AIDS or getting attacked by a pit bull. You genuinely wish them well.

One of the best stories I’ve ever heard about the struggle to forgive was told by Corrie ten Boom, who had been incarcerated in one of the worst concentration camps in Germany during the Second World War. Many years after that horrendous experience, she met for a second time one of the most cruel and heartless German guards she had ever known. He had humiliated and degraded her and her sister. He had jeered and visually raped them as they stood in the delousing shower. The former guard was among the audience at one of her talks. Now, the man stood before her with hand outstretched. "Will you forgive me?" he asked. Corrie writes: "I stood there with coldness clutching at my heart, but I know that the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart. I prayed, Jesus, help me! Woodenly, mechanically I thrust my hadn into the one stretched out to me and I experienced an incredible thing. The current started in my shoulder, raced down into my arms and sprang into our clutched hands. Then this warm reconciliation seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes. ‘I forgive you, brother,’ I cried with my whole heart. For a long moment we grasped each other’s hands, the former guard, the former prisoner. I have never known the love of God so intensely as I did in that moment!" (ill unlimited, 218 )