A few years ago, I had an epiphany of sorts. You know the kind; that moment when you realize something that is so blatantly obvious and yet is has eluded you. You see I had for the longest time been harboring a grudge, an unforgiving spirit, towards a person who wronged me……when I was in HIGH SCHOOL!   Now I am not going to tell you how long ago that was, but suffice to say it was more than a couple years. So some time ago, I started thinking about this wrong, this event and it occurred to me that if I ever happened to run into this person, I would want my revenge, my just retribution. And then it happened; that “aha” moment, where I realized that I had been carrying this load of resentment, this unforgiving spirit for so many years and for what? This person probably has long forgotten this incident and yet here I am carrying around this junk. In my heart, I had withheld any sense of forgiveness for this person because I believed that they totally didn’t deserve it. But the truth is, the only one I was hurting was myself. Unforgiveness primarily harms the one not doing the forgiving. Holding a grudge, wears at your joy, your spirit, your health. Unforgiveness truly is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to get sick. It makes no sense, yet we still do it, sometimes on a regular basis. I’m not sure if it is our idea of what justice is, or our desire to have things be made “equal”. Perhaps it is because we can scarcely believe that God has forgiven us so completely that we struggle to forgive others in the same manner. But the message of the Gospel is one of the completeness of God’s forgiveness for all people. It is the picture of a slate washed clean; not because of merit, not because of repentance, not because of time that has passed. But purely because of God’s love for us. God has forgiven us, all of us, all of our sins. May this be the day that we live in the truth of that life giving light!