Quotes about Forgiveness

The scorecard is rooted in resentment, and the space between you is highly responsive to resentment. The scorecard is lethal because its rooted in fear - fear that we're on our own, that we're not going to be taken care of, that we're not going to get what we need...In order to get rid of scorecard, you have to choose to act in love instead of fear. To get rid of your scorecard, someone has to move toward the other first.

Arguing about how it literally happened can be an easy way to avoid facing the people in your life you need to forgive. For the people who first heard this story, the story would have had a provocative, unsettling effect. The Assyrians? The Assyrians were like a huge, gaping, open wound for the Israelites. Bless the Assyrians? The story is extremely subversive because it insists that your enemy may be more open to grace and love than you are.

Jesus says, he "did not come to judge the world, but to save the world" (John 12). We can name Jesus, orient our lives around him, and celebrate

Even the slightest tremors of bitterness can block the flow of love.

Is God our friend, our provider, our protector, our father—or is God the kind of judge who may in the end declare that we deserve to spend forever separated from our Father? Is God like the characters in a story Jesus would tell, old ladies who keep searching for the lost coin until they find it, shepherds who don't rest until that one sheep is back in the fold, fathers who rush out to greet and embrace their returning son, or, in the end, will God give up?

Failure, we see again and again, isn't final, judgment has a point, and consequences are for correction.

Agape doesn't need a reason.

Of course Jonah is angry. When you haven't forgiven someone who has wronged you and then something good happens to them—when they are blessed or shown mercy or experience favor—it's infuriating.

If one by one we counted people out For the least sin, it wouldn't take us long To get so we had no one left to live with. For to be social is to be forgiving.

Nothing can make injustice just but mercy.

when people mean to be good to you, you don't mind very much when they're not quite--always.

You won't mind if I talk a good deal about her, will you, Mistress Blythe? It's a pleasure to me--for all the pain went out of her memory years ago and jest left its blessing. -Captain Jim