FORGIVE

Repent therefore of this your wickedness, and pray God if perhaps the thought of your heart may be forgiven you. For I see that you are poisoned by bitterness and bound by iniquity." - Acts 8:22-23

This is a scene that all of us might have seen before. It happens in novels, movies and dramatic productions.

A miserable, depressed, emotionally broken person hunched over a set of suspicious looking chemicals. His eyes are menacing.

His jaws are set. His fingers are methodically adding just a pinch of this and a dash of that to the evil-looking green fluid in the test tube before him.

His thoughts are filled with a mixture of dated images carrying memories of hatred for a grievance long past. He is thinking of the one who hurt him, and he is concocting some deadly poison for the offender.

After finishing with the preparation of his medicine of death, he breathes a sigh of relief as he straightens up, marvelling at the liquid vengeance he has created and mutters, "This will show him."

He turns and mixes the poisonous substance in the drink of the target of his bitterness.

Then tragedy strikes. He forgets the cup he poured the poison into and ends up mistakenly drinking his own poison.

Bitterness is a poison that we prepare for someone else, but then drink ourselves. It is a concentrated dose of emotional poison, often one that we carefully nurture and grow over the course of years.

When we react to someone's wrongdoing by withdrawing and giving our minds over to daydreams of retribution and evil plans, we are slowly poisoning our own hearts and minds.

Ask God to reveal any signs of poison in your system. Then, give yourself a dose of the antidote - forgiveness.

Prayer: Lord, give me the grace to forgive all those who have hurt me.

Scriptural Reading: Acts 8:13-25