One of the prayers my family and I say together every night is the Our Father, also known as The Lord’s Prayer. My kids have heard this prayer hundreds and hundreds of times. They are both amazing at memorizing random facts and can flawlessly repeat much longer and lesser known prayers, but they both consistently miss the same line of the Our Father: “As we forgive those who trespass against us.” This is the line that reminds us we need to forgive others. Interestingly, they never forget the part about God forgiving them/us.
I don’t always pick up on the subtleties of life, but even I can’t miss the obvious jab the Holy Spirit is taking at Me, through their consistent lack of memory. I totally struggle with forgiveness. I have been blessed to know people who are able to forgive the most atrocious crimes and yet I struggle with comparably petty offenses. This is not good for my eternal life, or even my current life on this planet, and I’m inclined to believe the Holy Spirit is not so subtly reminding me how much I have to work on (a lot!).
If you’ve read From the Shadows (book 3) you know there is a lot to forgive in there. That was not an accident. I like my books to be as “real” as possible, in a way that gives us distance from our real worlds. It is this distance that allows us to see more clearly. In Into the Embers (book 4) you will watch as Bria struggles to forgive. What Eli so rightly reminds her of is that we are called to forgive, not because it helps the ones who hurt us, but because it helps us.
There are a lot of things I do not know, but I do know that when we harbor animosity, anger, and hatred – those emotions destroy us. They are like a cancer that consume us slowly and methodically. They isolate us from God and from the person He created us to be. If we are separated from our true selves, we become something broken and disordered. Something that we were never created to be. God is love, and we were created in His image. When we separate ourselves from love we become a conduit for hate. Let me state the obvious, the world has plenty of hate without you or me adding to it, but it does not have enough love.
I pray you have a day filled with peace, love, and forgiveness. Please pray the same for me.
Jacqueline
ps Into the Embers is now available. Click here to be taken to your preferred online store, and after you read it, please let me know what you think by leaving a review or connecting with me on social media.