Observance

Here is an anonymous story:  Once there were two boys named John and James. They were best friends. They usually fought for various reasons. They disagreed in lots of things. But they never left each other. They were such good friends that they searched for jobs together and traveled to several places. They went to various cities together. They also went to towns, villages, forests, sea beaches and deserts. They always supported each other in life.

One day, John and James went to a desert. They walked for hours, and eventually, they got tired. But alas! They were left with very little water and food. Both of them were thirsty and hungry. So, James said, “we should at least drink some water. I am very thirsty.” But John disagreed with James. He wanted to save the remaining food and water.

So, they started to quarrel with each other. Suddenly, John got very angry and slapped James for misbehaving with him. But James said nothing. He wrote on the sand, “My best friend John slapped me today!”

They started to walk again. After hours of walking, John and James saw an oasis. They were very happy to see water in the middle of that desert. They decided to take a bath and have some fun together.

James was a little careless. Suddenly, John saw that James was drowning. So, John rushed to him and saved James. James was so grateful to John for saving his life that he hugged John and thanked him for saving his life. “Thank you so much for saving my life and being my best friend,” James said to John.

Later they took a little nap and then decided to start walking again. When they were about to leave the place, James found a stone and carved on it, “My best friend John saved my life today.”

John was very happy to see James’s sweet gesture. James said to John, “I carved that you slapped me on the sand because I knew the wind would have blown it away. But you saved my life this time, and I carved it on the rock because I know it will remain on the stone forever.” 

Moral of the Story

The moral of the above story is: “We should remember the good things in life and forget the bad ones.”

Insight

All of us make mistakes. Sometimes we fall short of our best intentions. We are occasionally short tempered and irritable when we meant to be calm and kind, stingy when we meant to be generous. In fact, life teaches us that to be human is to blunder, having a marvelous set of ideals in our mind and living somewhere beneath them.

Since we know that about ourselves, it should be no surprise, then, that others are as fallible as we are. They don’t always live up to their best intentions, either. They wrestle with life and at times fail. And sometimes in their shortness of sight, their tremblings under pressure, they may bruise or disappoint us. We are all vulnerable to the pain inflicted by another when he’s being less than he meant to be.

A barbed word may snag our serenity. A criticism may wound us to the marrow. That is when we have one of those rare opportunities to be like the Lord and forgive. His statement is one of the most known, and revered, that teaches us all a great lesson:

“Father, forgive them for they know not what they do,” (Luke 23:34) uttered the Christ, while still hanging from the cross, and the Romans, indifferent to His pain, frolicked around Him. 

Most of us know, too, what it is to be forgiven by the Lord when we turn from dark feelings to let His face shine upon us. His forgiveness is like a sweet amnesia. When we turn to Him again, He’ll remember our weakness no more. In fact, the world He has created seems to echo with the concept. Forgiveness is much like the intensified fragrance of the flower we’ve just crushed within our hand. Forgiveness is the green shoot that struggles up in a charred forest.

But while we understand the Lord’s forgiving us, it may seem harder for us to forgive another, especially while we are still smarting under his heel. When we struggle to forgive, it may be time to remember Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s words, “The little I’ve seen of the world teaches me to look upon the errors of others in sorrow, not in anger.”

Struggling humanity… how much we need to forgive one another, and what a spiritual lift it is to the torn heart, not only to be forgiven, but to truly learn to forgive.

Southern Standard contributor Cordell Crawford can be contacted at crawfordcordell@yahoo.com