Need a healing?  Start with forgiveness.

We all carry the need to forgive somebody around with us through life.  If you can’t think of anyone you need to forgive, try forgiving yourself.  Once you clean up that dark spot in your life, you’ll see healing demonstrated by the endeavor – often in physical terms.

But what really is forgiveness?  I think forgiveness comes when we truly clean up the mess.  We forgive and are forgiven when we no longer have anything to forgive.  It’s not, as some think, an act that somehow prefaces the solution of the original crime.  It only comes when the crime is solved and rectified.

The most prescient statement I’ve ever heard on the subject of forgiveness is found in the Lord’s Prayer.  Forgive us our debts (our trespasses) as we forgive our debtors (those who trespass against us).

I’ve always felt that the operative words to this command were “as we”.  Forgive us as we forgive others.  What’s the point of asking for forgiveness if we have not first cleaned up our act?  Actually, if we first clean up our act, we need not even ask for forgiveness because, by definition, as we clean up our act, just as the reparations are made, the act is forgiven.

It’s pretty simple really – pretty basic.  We tend to convolute the process with our human tendencies to squirm out of our responsibilities.

Face the music.  If you blow it with someone and wish to be forgiven, totally clean up the offence.  You will be forgiven.

And if you’re in the other shoes, if the debt lingers on, so does the need to forgive.

If we hold the debt over someone who needs to be forgiven, we can let go when the debt is rectified.  Let the offender know the enormity of the debt.  That’s your job.  Make sure they know the sum total and that you both agree on the total.  Then as they clean up the debt, let the natural process of forgiveness evolve.  You won’t even have to do anything.  It will just happen and you will no longer have to run around holding hatred in your heart.

Forgiveness will have done its magical/natural thing.

For more inspirational music, thoughts and ideas from Peter Link,
please visit Watchfire Music.