Keep No Record!
"Love bears all things,
believes all things, hopes
all things, endures all things."
1 Corinthians 13: 7
Is it possible to “forgive and forget”? We can
choose to forgive, but can we choose to forget?
Every time we tell ourselves to forget about an
offense we suffered, it refreshes the emotion of
that painful event.
It is possible to forgive and not forget an offense,
though in time the offense can become a
distant
memory. The danger of that is forgetting becomes
impossible. If we don’t forgive, we replay offenses
over and over, keeping it alive in our mind as if it
happens afresh every day.
Then resentment sets in—and resentment
gradually transitions into bitterness, a source
of trouble and defilement (Hebrews 12:15). So
what do we do? First, we choose to forgive
when we are hurt.
Then we love by bearing, believing, hoping, and
enduring
all things (1 Corinthians 13:7). We bear
the offense and believe and hope that it will never
happen again. We begin each day with a
clean
slate, keeping “no record of wrongs”
(1 Corinthians 13:5, NIV).
If you have
been hurt, first forgive,
then love. Live as if you have no
memory of the wrong suffered.
"Forgiving what we cannot forget creates
a new way to remember. We change the
memory of our past into a hope for our
future."
Lewis B. Smedes