A Wandering, Pondering Penguin

Good-natured indulgence and casual acceptance are not forgiveness and love but an expression of indifference and sometimes hostility. Real love and forgiveness mean caring enough to be hurt, caring enough to put ourselves in others' shoes and sharing their guilt as if it were our own. Real love and forgiveness are costly--not in the sense that the guilty party must squeeze them out of the injured party but in the sense that the injured party genuinely sympathizes with the guilty and shares his or her pain. 

(Shirley Guthrie, Christian Doctrine pg, 260)

Forgiveness is a theme that continues to bop about my life in conversations, in my readings and in my personal relationships. It can be hard to forgive and it is often to easy to pretend like you have forgiven. I hope to be more intentional with the forgiveness that I hand out with my words and my actions. I hope to not allow my forgiveness to make me feel powerful. I pray that by being forgiven I can humbly forgive others. 

A wise friend shared with me, from her personal experience, that it is important to forgive but in forgiving guarding one's heart must not be forgotten. Just because one may forgive another does not mean that trust has been re-instituted. 

Forgiveness is hard but forgiveness is necessary.