The Wound Will Not Be Our Final Home
As we’ve been thinking this week about how friendship requires forgiveness - letting people in, with all their limitations and imperfections, involves risk! - what stories and emotions have been stirred up in you? Perhaps there are relationships where forgiveness feels hard - you are still in process, still healing.
Today you’re invited to receive the words of this poem as a blessing for wherever you are in the journey of forgiveness. Imagine Jesus sitting next to you as you read. What does he say to you? What does he do?
The Hardest Blessing
If we cannot
lay aside the wound,
then let us say
it will not always
bind us.
Let us say
the damage
will not eternally
determine our path.
Let us say
the line of our life
will not always travel
along the places
we are torn.
Let us say
that forgiveness
can take some practice,
can take some patience,
can take a long
and struggling time.
Let us say
that to offer
the hardest blessing,
we will need
the deepest grace;
that to forgive
the sharpest pain,
we will need
the fiercest love;
that to release
the ancient ache,
we will need
new strength
for every day.
Let us say
the wound
will not be
our final home—
that through it
runs a road,
a way we would not
have chosen
but on which
we will finally see
forgiveness,
so long practiced,
coming toward us,
shining with the joy
so well deserved.