To Forgive and to Forget – August 25, 2002
It’s not always easy to forgive.
We may think that not forgiving the people who hurt us is a way of hurting them back somehow. But most of the people who hurt us get by just fine without our forgiveness. When we understand that to forgive means to free or to let go, we may find that “when we forgive we set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner we set free is us.”1
A French story tells of a farmer who picked up a piece of string on market day and put it in his pocket. He was later arrested on the false charge that he picked up a purse and put it in his pocket. The farmer protested his innocence and pulled the string from his pocket as evidence, but no one believed him. Instead, he was laughed at, humiliated, and imprisoned.
Later, when the purse was found, he was released, but the farmer was consumed with resentment and refused to let the matter die. Brooding over the injury, he neglected his farm, his work, and his health. Obsessed by the wrong done to him, he became gravely ill. On his deathbed, he murmured the words: “A piece of string! A piece of string!”2
Like the farmer who would neither forgive nor forget, we too may find it’s not always easy to forget past offenses. But if we keep a fresh picture before us of all the hurts and wrongs we have suffered, we will find little room for peace and joy. For us to heal ourselves and enjoy the lives we’re blessed with, we must learn to forget as well as forgive. As we find the strength to do so, we will find an overwhelming peace.
Program #3810
1. Lewis Smedes, The Art of Forgiving: When You Need to Forgive and Don’t Know How (Nashville: Moorings, 1996), 178.
2. See Guy de Maupassant, “A Piece of String,” The Tales of Guy de Maupassant (New York: Heritage Press, 1964), 3–9.