Lord,
sometimes I struggle to forgive
those who have hurt me.
I try to forgive them, Lord,
I really do!
And I think that I have managed to put
a particular incident behind me
and that I have managed to move on.
Then one day, in conversation,
I find myself mentioning
the incident or the person
and I am shocked
by the bitterness that I hear
in my voice.
I realise that, despite my best efforts,
I haven’t really managed
to forgive the person after all.

As I puzzle over this,
I find myself thinking
about friends and family
whom I love.
Loving people
isn’t a one-off decision
that never needs to be revisited.
Loving those people
is something that I do unthinkingly
every day.

It strikes me
that the call to forgive
is very like the call to love –
it’s one that I must answer
every single day.
Then it dawns on me
that this is hardly surprising
because loving and forgiving
are both two sides
of the same coin.

© Claire Murray, 27th June 2014