Mind Over Matter

This has been an interesting week. "Interesting as in my-what-a-lovely-world?" the fellow in the back asks. "Or interesting as in I-only-have-one-nerve-left-and-you-just-stepped-on-it?"

I'm glad you asked, sir. The answer is, the latter.

Question: what do you do with that one person who always seems to say, do, or act wrongly? Toward you? Yeah, yeah, I know what you'd like to do to them: it involves either firerams or fireplace pokers. Maybe both. But what should you really do? Especially given Jesus' admonition to Peter about forgiving someone "seventy times seven"? (For you math dullards, like me, that's four hundred and ninety times...a day. Yowza. That's what it says, all right.)

When faced with a situation that, such as I was this week, it helped me to remember two very disparate sayings I heard years ago, both of which contain wisdom.

One is from an old friend, Hal Revelson, who passed from my life a long time back. When someone would act bad toward him, he'd say, "John, concerning this situation, I now realize there's one more fact about it that I don't know." What makes this statement more amazing is that Hal was raised an Orthodox Jew, and when he came to know the Messiah, his entire family staged a burial for him, complete with empty coffin, and then burned or destroyed every picture, note, or letter from him they possessed. And yet...he forgave them.

The other saying is more prosaic, and comes from science fiction writer Gerald Kersh. I quote: "There are men whom one hates until, through a chink in their armor, you get the glimpse of something nailed down and in torment." Wow. Chew on that a while.

So...who do you need to mend fences with? Maybe today?

John

Posted by jlr-5352 at April 30, 2006 03:46 PM