I wanted to clarify something about the blog entry I wrote — the one called The Questions I Asked,  the one about the old dying man who had been located sixty years after his crimes and was imprisoned.

I wasn’t thinking about forgiving him or not forgiving him. For me, forgiving him would be an idle gesture. In my heart, I don’t forgive him. Whether he’s repented or not isn’t my issue with this whole thing, though if he is now a different person, I wonder about the point of imprisonment from that angle as well. I seem to wonder about imprisonment altogether, although I doubt I have an alternative to offer, so this is all idle chatter from me.

My question was: “Should he have been imprisoned when he was dying?” I suppose my question also included: “After so many years,” though I do think if someone were on his last legs whenever it was he had hurt someone, I’d let him die in peace.

We have all heard to turn the other cheek.  That has been taken to mean, I believe, as forgiveness.  God in Heavenletters™ sees turning the other cheek differently. He says it means to look at the perceived offense from another angle.

There is a recent post on the forum from Barbara. The situation Barbara faced with someone at work is far different from terrible crimes such as the old man had committed in his youth. Barbara had the sort of thing that we tend to have more than once, the kind of situation where we don’t like the way someone is treating us, and it weighs on us. Barbara did choose to look at her situation from another angle.

Here’s her beautiful story taken from the forum:

I work with a woman who is about 14 years younger than I am. I feel she’s a good person, but she often has dark moods where she gets very hostile. I know she’s had a lot of hard things to deal with in the last few years after having lived a pretty spoiled girl life so I’ve learned to do my best to stay out of her path when she’s like that but it was getting worse and worse and one day I came home steaming from all of that rude moodiness and was still feeling angry the next day (Saturday).

I decided I didn’t like feeling that way so I sat down and asked God to show me a better way to deal with the situation instead of feeling resentful, and wounded. It didn’t take long for Him to give me an option and I got right to it! I love to cook so I made a nice big special meal for her and her husband, packed it up, called her and asked if I could drop something off. When I went to her house and handed her the dinner filled box, she was astonished. I had not prepared what I was going to say, so it just flowed out and I said “I just wanted you to know that I appreciate you.” She looked shocked, teared up and hugged me so hard! She has been a different person since then because I now see her fighting to control her dark moods.

Last week was my one year anniversary in the office, and she made a beautiful flower arrangement for me with a card telling me how thankful she is that I’m a gentle, kind, caring woman. I now understand that she is a gift to me, because from her I’m continuing the lessons in being less judgmental and not to react to things like this as a personal affront. It’s not about me. Thank you for constantly reminding us that we CAN have the joy of hearing from God.
Barbara

Isn’t that a beautiful story?  Barbara did indeed come from a different angle. And she credits God.

Tomorrow, I would like to talk about an experience I had where I was not the angel Barbara was, and yet it turned out great too. Hmm.