FORGIVENESS A HEALING GRACE

Forgiveness, conscious, willing and loving is an activity of
the feelings of man. Through this "grace", he releases the pent-
up rebellions, resentment's, tensions and self-justifications as
well as the self-condemnations which create the major portion of
the ills of mind and body. Forgiveness replaces these by the
constructive feeling of understanding love and tolerant kind-
ness. A conscious healing of the soul takes place when the in-
dividual arises in the dignity of its own awareness that the
power of forgiveness lies within the heart and proceeds to gen-
erate a feeling of forgiving love toward every person, place, con-
dition and thing which has knowingly or unknowingly done
him wrong. Sometimes it takes a little time to want to for-
give a seemingly unjust act. The soul rather enjoys nursing
the grudges and the hurts and builds a shell of distrust around
it, living in a constant repetition of the errors of self or others.
Thus, there is conjured up out of the realm of imagination,
the repetition of the original wrong which lives (and corrodes
through its living) , the very peace of mind and heart, the very
strength and vitality of body which every individual seeks.
In "the Lord's Prayer" is a very thought-provoking state-
ment in the invocation to the Father of all to "forgive us our
trespasses as (in the same measure) we forgive those who have
trespassed against us". We are asking that the Lord of Life
deal with us as we deal with our fellowman. To receive the
fullest blessing of the "grace" of forgiveness for ourselves, we
must want to and really enjoy forgiving the life which has
14 HOPE August-September, 1955
seemed to do us wrong. We must be as willing to forgive our-
selves as we are to forgive each other. The guilt complexes,
the obsessions buried in the subconscious minds of men that
erupt as disease of mind and body, are due to the lack of for-
giveness of the soul for certain imagined or actual transgres-
sions of the Law of life.
This does not mean that we should be lax in our exertion of
personal vigilance over transgressions. It does mean, however,
that we should be willing to invoke the "grace" of God through
those errors that have already been made and to turn our faces
toward each new day unencumbered by the errors of the days
and years that have passed.
When a teacher undertakes to convey certain facts to the
students under his supervision, he does not continue to remind
them of their former errors when the students have once
learned the principle and make those errors no longer. Why
then should an All-wise Heavenly Father revert to the principle
of punishment when the child has learned the lesson and no
longer creates the causes which have manifested as the ills that
appear on the screen of life. Each man can and must wipe his
slate clean and write anew. The quality of forgiveness is the
way and means of wiping away the mistakes of the past and
setting one's own world at peace so that the "grace" of God may
enter in.
Each evening, in a period of retrospection, look back
through your day and consciously try to sincerely forgive all
the mistakes made by your self and others. Enter sleep at
peace with the world, your fellowman and your God. Then
you will arise refreshed in mind and body, able to proceed
"upon the Father's business".

Author Unknown