FORGIVENESS, FORGETTING AND

A man who was telling his friend about an argument he’d had with his wife commented, “Oh, how I hate it, every time we have an argument; she gets historical.”

The friend replied, “You mean hysterical.”

“No,” he insisted. “I mean historical. Every time we argue she drags up everything from the past and holds it against me!”517

A friend of Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross, once reminded her of an especially cruel thing that had been done to her years before. But Miss Barton seemed not to recall it. “Don’t you remember it?” her friend asked.

“No,” came the reply, “I distinctly remember forgetting it.”

You can’t be free and happy if you harbor grudges, so put them away. Get rid of them. Collect postage stamps, or collect coins, if you wish—but don’t collect grudges.518

Prospero, when finally given a chance to punish those who had removed him of his rightful place as king, states, “Let us not burden our remembrance with a heaviness that’s gone” (William Shakespeare, The Tempest).519

God is able to forget our past. Why can’t we? God throws our sins into the depths of the sea and puts up a sign on the shore that reads, “No fishing.”

In ancient times the depths of the sea were completely inaccessible to us. The limits were how far a man could dive with one lungful of air. In modern times we have submarines that can go anywhere on or below the sea’s surface, so we do not fully appreciate this figure of speech. Perhaps the inaccessible aspect would be clearer if we changed the statement to “God has cast all of our sins into a nuclear waste dump.” That’s truly inaccessible! And that’s forgiveness!520