By Ben Disney
Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. Ephesians 4:31-32
Forgiving does not erase the bitter past. A healed memory is not a deleted memory. Instead, 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
It’s a disturbing picture: an unfortunate encounter between a turtle and a discarded piece of plastic. Given the distorted shape of the shell, it probably happened years ago when the turtle was small and its outer shell still soft and still in its formative stage. Now, forever bound in garbage and unable to extricate itself, the turtle nevertheless finds a way to survive and grow. The cost is obvious, though; it eventually becomes a grotesque distortion of its original self.
In less obvious ways, most of us have experienced the binding and constrictive pain of past hurts and disappointments. The truth is we all manage to survive. But the deeper question is at what cost? If the goal is to just survive, most of us can do that on our own. The problem comes when anger, bitterness, jealousy, and resentment begin to permeate our hearts and minds. The real danger is that it slowly and gradually begins to distort our souls and twists us into something we were never intended to be.
Surviving a painful chapter in your life is a good start, and for some it may be the best you can do at this point. But for all of us who believe in a greater hope, survival is not the goal. We are made in the image of God. Anything that threatens to distort our true nature or reshape us into something we were never intended or created to be is in direct conflict with God’s will and desire for us. And if you’re still constricted by the pain of a past disappointment and unable to extricate yourself from the garbage that binds you, here’s something to consider: So I went down to the potter's house, and I saw him working at the wheel. But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him. Then the word of the LORD came to me: "O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter does?" declares the LORD. "Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel." Jeremiah 18:3-6
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