Here it is: we are commanded to forgive.

The nice part of forgiveness, as hard as it is for most of us, is that it is the only way to make the pain go away.

In a Start Trek episode (the original) Scotty once said, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”  With forgiveness, the sin that is done against us is the first time that someone hurts us. After that, as we recall it and the pain comes back, that is not the sin of the person who did it to us- that is our sin of unforgiveness.

Sin against me once, shame on you. Let me continue to relive the sin and rehearse the anger and pain of it, over and over- shame on me!

You want to get rid of the pain? You want to be free of the shame, frustration and anger of being sinned against? Then do as the Lord requires: release it to Him. Forgive the person, pray for the person (that helps, actually, a lot to be able to forgive) and earn a blessing for doing what God requires.

It’s true, that old saw- To err is human; to forgive, Divine.  God says we should forgive, and when we do, it makes the hurt go away.

 

Ever wonder, when someone says to you, “Have a good one!” that it would be great if we really could control that. I mean, what if we could have a good one whenever we wanted to?

Well, we can. Not that we can control what happens to us, or that we can stop bad things from happening to anyone else, but we can control how we view the world and our place in it.

That nice, Jewish boy from Tarsus, Shaul (Saul, aka Paul) said that we should  run the good race and keep our eyes on the prize. For Believers, that prize isn’t here on Earth- it’s Eternity in Gods presence.

Yacov (James) tells us that life is but a mist, and Moshe (Moses) said pretty much the same thing. When we compare a human lifetime to Eternity, it is nothing.

Think about the bad times in your life. They were horrible, and often we don’t ever get over them. However, we can get through them. Not on our own power, but with God. With God, all things are possible.

Time is weird: when we look forward to something it takes forever to arrive, when we are in the midst of something it seems to take a really long time to finish, and when we look back at things they were over and done with in a flash.

Did you know that the word “Ruach” is mostly translated as spirit, yet the literal translation is breath. When you are losing control and you feel that string of expletives at the back of your throat straining to get out into the open, take 2 Ruachs and curse about it in the morning. Trust me, when you call on the Ruach to calm you, and remember that this life is but a wink of the eye, you will be in control of how you feel.

So….the next time you are frustrated at work or with someone on the road, or it seems that the entire day is designed to make your life terrible, remember the Ruach (Spirit) that indwells is more powerful than what you are going through (He that is within us is more powerful than that which is in the World) and all of this won’t mean anything in Eternity.

Have a good one!