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Jul 16, 2023 06:00am

Forgive

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A couple of weeks ago, my husband and I watched a movie called “Amish Grace.” It was a story that began October 2, 2006, when a local, non-Amish man — 32-year-old Charles C. Roberts, a devoted father who was also a milk truck driver that served several Amish farms in the area — burst into a one-room Amish school deep in Pennsylvania Amish Country. Apparently because he was “mad” at God for taking his newborn daughter, among other things, he had decided to get back at Him by doing the most terrible thing he could imagine.

So he went into the school fully armed, let the boys and the teacher go, barricaded the doors and killed 5 girls and severely injured 5 others, before killing himself.

A female reporter who was covering the story was trying to come to grips with the fact that several of the Amish fathers, including some who had lost their daughters in the terrible ordeal, had visited the widow of the shooter shortly after it happened to let her know that they had forgiven her husband and that they did not blame her at all. They had also offered to help her and her children any way they could and found ways to do just that in the coming days.

In one scene, the skeptical reporter was walking through a cornfield with one of the Amish elders. She shared her doubts with him and confessed that she didn’t see how they could forgive like that. Then she just came out and asked the elder whether their forgiveness was real or if they were just doing what they knew they “should” do or had been “programmed” to do.

What he said next really touched my heart. With tears in his eyes, the elder said, “Forgiveness comes from an open heart and it comes without condition… or it does not come at all.” Yes, their forgiveness had been total and it had been real.

Nobody could be harder to love than someone who had deliberately killed innocent, helpless little girls, especially if it was your little girl. Yet they did it — with an open heart and without condition.

That’s the way God wants us to forgive those in our lives who may have hurt us in some way. We are simply to forgive them, not expecting anything in return. They may or may not think they need to be forgiven, and they may or may not accept your forgiveness, but it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you forgive — then leave the rest up to God, trusting that He will work in their hearts and yours.

Having unforgiveness in your heart has been described as “Taking poison and hoping the other person dies.” So free yourself and them from the prison you’ve built in your heart by forgiving that other person for what they did or did not do.

Then (and this is the hard part) ask them to forgive you for your unforgiveness and for any bad things you may have thought or said about them.

Is it an easy thing to do? Absolutely not! But is it the right thing to do? It surely is, and it’s the only way to make things right with God: “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (I John 1:9).

And it’s also the only way to make things right with the other person: “And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you” (Ephesians 4:32).

Forgiveness is God’s gift to us to heal our hearts and set us free. Asking for God to forgive your sins and accepting His Son as your Savior will set you free for eternity. Sincerely and totally forgiving one of His creations, and asking them to forgive you, will set you free on earth.

But remember that it must be done “with an open heart and without condition.” Henry Ward Beecher said: “I can forgive, but I cannot forget, is only another way of saying, I will not forgive. Forgiveness ought to be like a canceled note — torn in two, and burned up, so that it never can be shown against one.”
Only then can you truly shatter that bottle of poison!