Monday, July 05, 2004
For those struggling with forgiveness (or the after effects), here is an experience of Corrie Ten Boom
In his book —Robert Jeffress in his book When Forgiveness Doesn't Make Sense tells the story of Corrie ten Boom who had been unable to forget an atrocity committed against her while in a concentration camp. Although she'd forgiven her offender, thinking about the injustice she'd suffered was robbing her of sleep years later. She asked God why.
"His help came in the form of a kindly Lutheran pastor," Corrie wrote, "to whom I confessed my failure after two sleepless weeks. 'Up in that tower,' the pastor said, nodding out the window, 'is a bell rung by pulling on a rope. But you know what? After the sexton lets go of the rope, the bell keeps on ringing, slower and slower until there's a final dong and it stops. The same goes for forgiveness. When we forgive, we take our hand off the rope. But if we've been tugging at our grievances for a long time, old angry thoughts may keep coming for a while: the ding-dongs of the bell slowing down.'
"So it proved to be," Corrie said. "There were a few more midnight reverberations, a couple of dings when the subject came up in my conversations. But the force had gone out of them. They came less and less often and at last stopped altogether."
In his book —Robert Jeffress in his book When Forgiveness Doesn't Make Sense tells the story of Corrie ten Boom who had been unable to forget an atrocity committed against her while in a concentration camp. Although she'd forgiven her offender, thinking about the injustice she'd suffered was robbing her of sleep years later. She asked God why.
"His help came in the form of a kindly Lutheran pastor," Corrie wrote, "to whom I confessed my failure after two sleepless weeks. 'Up in that tower,' the pastor said, nodding out the window, 'is a bell rung by pulling on a rope. But you know what? After the sexton lets go of the rope, the bell keeps on ringing, slower and slower until there's a final dong and it stops. The same goes for forgiveness. When we forgive, we take our hand off the rope. But if we've been tugging at our grievances for a long time, old angry thoughts may keep coming for a while: the ding-dongs of the bell slowing down.'
"So it proved to be," Corrie said. "There were a few more midnight reverberations, a couple of dings when the subject came up in my conversations. But the force had gone out of them. They came less and less often and at last stopped altogether."
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