Do you find it hard to forgive?

We know that forgiveness is a wonderful experience both for the one who forgives and the one who is forgiven.  It is easy to talk about it but it is one of the hardest tasks we are ever called upon to undertake. It can be  too painful and sometimes our pride and sense of status intrudes as we remember what was said or done to us in the past.  Forgiveness requires humility and sometimes we need to cry out to the Lord in prayer for His help in forgiving those who have hurt us in some way.

We know that the Japanese invaded the Korean Peninsula before the Second World War and inflicted terrible atrocities on the Korean people.  Awful things were done to the local population in the name of Japanese imperialism.  After the war when the Japanese had surrendered and retreated from the peninsula many Koreans continued to remember the dreadful things that had been inflicted on them personally and on their family and friends and harboured hatred and bitterness in their hearts towards the Japanese nation.

Saying Sorry

“Sorry seems to be the hardest word!” It is sometimes a hard word to say, it certainly is a hard word to mean and maybe even harder to accept.

I used to be a headteacher and at times boys would be sent to my office for fighting on the yard. They would come into my office saying sorry before even I spoke. I would often tell them that if they were really sorry it would not happen again, but often they would be sent back a little while later for fighting again. They were not sorry at all. They saw “sorry” only as a word that got them out of trouble. That is the difference between being sorry that you were caught and being repentant of an action. To be truly repentant means that you turn away from it.