*A note about this post. I wrote this back in November of 2016 at a time when our country was in great distress after the election results came in. I believe this is something we still need to hear, because many of us continue to walk out our woundings with little grace for those who disagree with us. I have added a little more to it since then, but 95% of the words written here are from the original post I shared on Facebook.
“When we confess our sins,” I said, “God casts them into the deepest ocean, gone forever. And even though I cannot find a Scripture for it, I believe God then places a sign out there that says, NO FISHING ALLOWED.” -Corrie ten Boom, Holocaust survivor, Tramp for the Lord.
Today, as I have been fighting sickness and exhaustion, something entered my heart and mind. I felt like the Spirit of God was speaking words to me that were humbling and overwhelming and beautiful. For those of you that don’t believe in God, or don’t believe that God speaks to you, perhaps you will think I’m crazy, or you won’t feel you are able to relate. For those of you that have had similar experiences, perhaps this will encourage you. I believe this is a message of hope for everyone, though, so I hope you will read on.
More than ever I am realizing how many of us have been manipulated by the news and media around us. I am one of those people who is always trying to see both sides of the issue. I don’t want to be overly biased so I try to hear and see things from other people’s’ perspectives. It’s that journalist major within me. I’ve watched both Republican and Democratic conventions to try and make sure I am hearing all sides of the issues. I’ve truly believed that I was being well-rounded and to an extent I was. But today I thought to myself, “What if I TOO have been manipulated by the media? What if what I thought was the “other side” (what I thought was the more balanced and correct side) was just as manipulative as the side that I saw as biased and unbalanced? What if? And what if I, in buying into the lies the media has spewed out over us, have in turn, been an agent in this spreading of lies and anger and bitterness?” And as I began to have these thoughts, I began to see things more clearly. I began to see why others could think a specific candidate, president, senator etc. would be great when I thought the same person was awful. I also saw why they could think why another candidate would be awful when I thought they were great. And then it began to flow into other parts of my life and thinking. And eventually this all led down the road of forgiveness. I hope that if I have been a part of the problem, you will forgive me. I hope you will see that my heart is to seek out truth no matter what, and to share truth in love and humility.
We store up so much anger and unforgiveness toward others. Sometimes what we believe is righteous anger, is just bitterness and unforgiveness rising up and screaming out. We are so many of us hurt and broken. We are wounded, and in our woundedness we believe that the world owes us a debt. We believe that those that have hurt us should be hurt, as well. We are continually beaten down, time after time, and we are exhausted, broken…we no longer see that those who hurt us can be changed. Unforgiveness and woundedness keep us chained….we are often bound by them, unable to forgive, unable to move forward.
Viktor E. Frankl, a holocaust survivor, shares a story from after the war ended. He and his friend were walking together when Frankl tried to avoid walking through a field of green crops. Of his friend Frankl says, “but he drew his arm through mine and dragged me through it. I stammered something about not treading down the young crops. He became annoyed, gave me an angry look and shouted, ‘You don’t say! And hasn’t enough been taken from us? My wife and child have been gassed-not to mention everything else-and you would forbid me to tread on a few stalks of a oats!'” Frankl goes on to say that “no one has the right to do wrong, not even if wrong has been done to them.” (Man’s Search for Meaning)
Wow. This man who survived four different concentration camps, who saw most of his family murdered by Hitler’s regime, still held that we have a choice to do the right thing, and that this is the right choice to make, no matter what kind of hell a person has walked through. I highly recommend you read Man’s Search for Meaning, because it will humble you and amaze you, and you will not read this book without being changed.
And as I was thinking of all of these things, trying to work them out in my mind and in my heart, a story that Corrie ten Boom (a personal hero of mine) told came to mind. She spent months in a brutal concentration camp during WWII, where she watched her sister and best friend die, along with many many others. She carried bitterness and hate toward those that carried out such heinous acts…which is beyond understandable. How do you forgive those that acted in hate every day? How do you forgive those that murder and torture and torment the innocent right before your very eyes?
So here I will stop talking, and share an excerpt from Corrie Ten Boom’s Tramp for the Lord. I promise you the read will be worth it, as she shares about her experience after the war, meeting one of the cruelest guards at Ravensbruck, the concentration camp she was imprisoned at (the photos through this post are from our visit to Ravensbrück in May 2017. I wept through this story today, even though I have read it many times before, because it is the most beautiful story of forgiveness in the midst of great pain. And I think all of us need to search our own hearts, and forgive even when we don’t feel like we can, because in forgiveness we will find great healing. In forgiveness we will find freedom.
“It was in a church in Munich that I saw him-a balding, heavyset man in a gray overcoat, a brown felt hat clutched between his hands. People were filing out of the basement room where I had just spoken, moving along the rows of wooden chairs to the door at the rear. It was 1947 and I had come from Holland to defeated Germany with the message that God forgives.
It was the truth they needed most to hear in that bitter, bombed-out land, and I gave them my favorite mental picture. Maybe because the sea is never far from a Hollander’s mind, I liked to think that that’s where forgiven sins were thrown. ‘When we confess our sins,’ I said, ‘God casts them into the deepest ocean, gone forever. And even though I cannot find a Scripture for it, I believed God then places a sign out there that says, NO FISHING ALLOWED.’
The solemn faces stared back at me, not quite daring to believe. There were never questions after a talk in Germany in 1947. People stood up in silence, in silence collected their wraps, in silence left the room.
And that’s when I saw him, working his way forward against the others. One moment I saw the overcoat and the brown hat; the next, a blue uniform and a visored cap with its skull and crossbones. It came back with a rush: the huge room with its harsh overhead lights; the pathetic pile of dresses and shoes in the center of the floor; the shame of walking naked past this man. I could see my sister’s frail form ahead of me, ribs sharp beneath the parchment skin. Betsie, how thin you were!
The place was Ravensbruck and the man who was making his way forward had been a guard-one of the most cruel guards.
Now he was in front of me, hand thrust out: ‘A fine message, Fraulein! How good it is to know that, as you say, all our sins are at the bottom of the sea!’
And I, who had spoken so glibly of forgiveness, fumbled in my pocketbook rather than take that hand. He would not remember me, of course-how could he remember one prisoner among those thousands of women?
But I remembered him and the leather crop swinging from his belt. I was face-to-face with one of my captors and my blood seemed to freeze.
‘You mentioned Ravensbruck in your talk,’ he was saying. ‘I was a guard there.’ No, he did not remember me.
‘But since that time,’ he went on, ‘I have become a Christian. I know that God has forgiven me for the cruel things I did there, but I would like to hear from your lips as well. Fraulein,’ -again the hand came out-’will you forgive me?’
And I stood there-I whose sins had again and again to be forgiven-and could not forgive. Betsie had died in that place-could he erase her slow terrible death simply for the asking?
It could not have been many seconds that he stood there-hand held out-but to me it seemed hours as I wrestled with the most difficult thing I had ever had to do.
For I had to do it-I knew that. The message that God forgives has a prior condition: that we forgive those who have injured us. ‘If you do not forgive men their trespasses,’ Jesus says, ‘neither will your Father in heaven forgive your trespasses.’
I knew it not only as a commandment of God, but as a daily experience. Since the end of the war I had had a home in Holland for victims of Nazi brutality. Those who were able to forgive their former enemies were able also to return to the outside world and rebuild their lives, no matter what the physical scars. Those who nursed their bitterness remained invalids. It was as simple and as horrible as that.
And still I stood there with the coldness clutching my heart. But forgiveness is not an emotion-I Knew that too. Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart. ‘Jesus, help me!’ I prayed silently. ‘I can lift my hand. I can do that much. You supply the feeling.’
And so woodenly, mechanically, I thrust my hand into the one stretched out to me. And as I did, an incredible thing took place. The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes.
‘I forgive you, brother!’ I cried. ‘With all my heart.’
For a long moment we grasped each other’s hands, the former guard and the former prisoner. I had never known God’s love so intensely, as I did then. But even so, I realized it was not my love. I had tried, and did not have the power. It was the power of the Holy Spirit as recorded in Romans 5:5, ‘…because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.’”
*Did you know Young Living carries an essential oil blend called Forgiveness? Check it out!
