On Going Beyond Forgiveness
One Sunday this summer, my pastor had decided to preach on the topic of forgiveness. A topic that perhaps many of us have a tendency to glance over. It's easy enough to forgive someone when they bump into you, take the last sandwich or forget to call you, right? But as my pastor was preaching through the Lord's Prayer and came to "forgive our sins as we forgive those who sin against us", that sentence - even though I've heard it read, recited and preached over hundreds of times before - pierced my soul that day. I'd always viewed myself as a forgiving person, but in that moment I remembered one person who I'd never even tried to forgive. It's easy to look past minor offenses, but when someone has hurt you so deeply that you find it hard to trust anyone, your heart will shut itself up in a tower and refuse to come down. Because of how my friend had treated me and the things they'd done and said - I had let bitterness and anger well up i...