Forgive and Forget
by Luther Blackmon
An old slave had defied his master’s order not to read the Bible and was being flogged for it. As the whip cut into his flesh, his owner taunted him with: “What can your Bible do for you now, boy?” “It can teach me to forgive master,” he replied.
It is sometimes more difficult to forget than to remember. But we must learn to forget. “We do not mean literally to forget, but to cease to nurse a grudge, to put the thing behind us, never to be brought up again, no matter what happens in the future.
We need to forget our past failures. Don’t cry over spilled milk; get up and milk the cow again. When you have tried something and failed, learn a lesson from your failure and then forget it.
Some people can never get over a slight by someone or a wrong done to them. The penitentiary is full of people who cannot forget a real or imagined wrong by an individual or society. A man told me that one of the reasons he had never become a Christian was that he could not forgive a wrong done to him. One of the first recorded statements of the Lord was: “But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses" (Matthew 6:15). We had better remember that no unforgiving person can have fellowship with a forgiving God.
When Abraham Lincoln was President, he was bitterly criticized by Edward McMasters Stanton. He called Lincoln a “low cunning clown,” the “original gorilla.” Stanton was a Democrat, but after the attack on Ft. Sumter, Lincoln appointed him Secretary of War because Stanton was a loyal man and qualified for the job. Lincoln was more concerned for the country than for Stanton’s opinion of him. When Mr. Stanton looked into the rugged and homely face of Lincoln after he was killed, he remarked in subdued tones of respect, “There lies the greatest leader this country has ever known.” Would it not be nice if Christians would put the interest of the Lord’s work and His church before their own petty little injuries? We could use a lot of real men and women who have Lincoln's spirit concerning this matter.
A little girl was asked to define forgiveness. She said in substance, “I don’t know the definition, but it is like this: when you crush a rose, the only resistance it offers is a sweet fragrance.”
Paul might have remembered the ill-treatment he received at Philippi, but instead, he said: “I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mind for you all making request with joy, for your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now” (Philippians 1:3-4).
