Forgiveness is easy to admire and very hard to practise. It costs the person who forgives, and it often makes no sense to anyone watching. Yet again and again, people who forgive find that they are the ones set free.
These eight stories about forgiveness, retold in our own words, include true accounts of extraordinary courage and a few simple parables that preachers have used for generations. Each ends with a short takeaway.
Stories in this collection:
- "This Is My Revenge": Tomás Borge Meets His Torturer
- "He Said, 'I Don't Remember'"
- Going Fishing: A Child's Lesson on Forgiveness
- George Harrison and His Sister: A Reconciliation Almost Too Late
- Forgiving the Dead Man Walking: Debbie Morris's Story
- Bud Welch and the Survivor Tree of Oklahoma City
- The Red Jelly Stain on the Mauve Sofa
- Building Bridges: The Carpenter and Two Brothers
"This Is My Revenge": Tomás Borge Meets His Torturer
Tomás Borge was one of the founders of the Sandinista movement that fought against the Somoza dictatorship, the regime that had dominated Nicaragua for decades.
During the struggle Borge was captured and imprisoned. While in prison he was tortured for long periods, by some accounts for hundreds of hours in total.
After the revolution of 1979 he was freed and became the country's Minister of the Interior. According to a report by the poet and priest Ernesto Cardenal, Borge one day came face to face with one of the men who had tortured him, now a prisoner himself.
Borge walked up to the man who had inflicted such terrible, relentless pain on him and told him that he was going to take his revenge. Then he held out his hand and said, in effect: this is my revenge. I forgive you.
Takeaway: Paul wrote, "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good" (Romans 12:21). Forgiveness is the one revenge that breaks the cycle instead of feeding it.
Source: Reported by Ernesto Cardenal, National Catholic Reporter, 17 September 1979.
"He Said, 'I Don't Remember'"
There was once a priest in the Philippines who carried the burden of a secret sin. He had committed it many years earlier, while he was training for the ministry. He had confessed it and repented, but he still had no sense that God had forgiven him.
In his church was a woman who claimed to have visions in which she spoke with Christ, and Christ spoke with her. The priest was sceptical, and he decided to test her.
The next time you speak with Christ, he told her, I want you to ask him what sin your priest committed while he was at Bible college. The woman agreed.
A few days later the priest asked her, a little nervously, whether Christ had visited her again. Yes, she said, he had.
And did you ask him what sin I committed at Bible college? Yes, she replied, she had.
Well, the priest asked, what did he say?
She answered: He said, "I don't remember."
Takeaway: God promises, "I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more" (Hebrews 8:12). If God has chosen not to bring it up again, we do not need to keep bringing it up either.
Source: Reported in Ron Lee Davis, A Forgiving God in an Unforgiving World.
Going Fishing: A Child's Lesson on Forgiveness
A little boy was out at the supermarket with his mother, and he was having a particularly naughty day. Eventually his mother told him firmly that he was not to touch another thing in the shop.
As she was walking up an aisle, she heard a tremendous crash. She turned round to see her son standing next to what had been a huge pyramid display of cans, holding a single can in his hand. He had pulled one from the very bottom and sent hundreds tumbling across the floor.
His mother's face went bright red, a mixture of embarrassment and anger. She stormed down the aisle, picked him up and sat him firmly in the seat of the trolley. Don't you dare move another inch, young man, she said.
After a few minutes, the boy plucked up his courage. Mummy, he said, you told me the other day that when God forgives our sins, he buries them at the bottom of the deepest ocean, didn't you?
Yes, son, his mother replied through clenched teeth.
And you said that no matter what we did, God would never drag those things up again, didn't you?
Yes, son.
Well, Mummy, said the boy, I've got a feeling that when we get home, you're going to go fishing.
Takeaway: Micah 7:19 says God will "hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea." Forgiving like God means we stop fishing for old offences.
Source: Traditional story; author unknown.
George Harrison and His Sister: A Reconciliation Almost Too Late
Former Beatle George Harrison died of cancer in November 2001. During his final days his wife and son were with him, and so was his older sister, Louise.
Louise's presence was especially poignant. According to news reports at the time, she and George had been estranged for many years. The rift was said to have begun when Louise opened a bed and breakfast named after a Beatles song, something George took badly. One hurt led to another, and the silence went on for decades.
The rift was healed only when George knew that he would probably die. Louise later described their reconciliation as difficult but deeply satisfying. They held hands, she said, the way they used to. They talked for hours, as they once had, about life and God and the universe. They were able to look into each other's eyes again with love. She called it a very positive and loving meeting.
Her words describe exactly what reconciliation is: two people who have been at odds coming together again in a renewed and restored relationship, able once more to look at each other with love. That is what it means to be reconciled with God, and with one another.
The tragedy, of course, is that George and Louise waited so long. They missed out on so many years they could have shared. It is just as tragic when we wait too long to be reconciled with the people we love, or with God.
Takeaway: Reconciliation is beautiful whenever it comes, but the tragedy is the years we waste. Is there someone you need to call before it is too late?
Source: Ananova News Service, 9 December 2001.
Forgiving the Dead Man Walking: Debbie Morris's Story
This true story involves serious violence, including sexual assault. We describe it without graphic detail.
On a Friday night in 1980, sixteen-year-old Debbie Morris and her boyfriend, Mark, were out on a date in Louisiana when they were abducted by two men. One of them was Robert Lee Willie, one of the real killers whose story lies behind the film Dead Man Walking, starring Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn. Mark was shot and left for dead in the woods, though he survived. Debbie was held for two terrifying days and brutally assaulted.
Two days in a whole lifetime, yet they understandably left a deep mark on Debbie's life. For years afterwards she struggled with pain, anger, depression, heavy drinking and guilt. What is most remarkable is her long journey towards healing and forgiveness, which she tells in her book Forgiving the Dead Man Walking.
She came to see that she needed to forgive Willie, if only for her own sake. She had watched rage and bitterness consume the lives of the parents of another young woman whom the same men had murdered, and she did not want to become a prisoner of her past. On the night Willie was executed, she found that she could forgive him. She prayed that, as best she could, she would forgive him, and that if the execution went ahead it would be quick, because she did not want him to suffer any more.
But what does forgiveness mean in a situation like that? Debbie found help in the work of the therapist and professor Terry Hargrave, who describes forgiveness in two broad stages. The first, which he calls salvage, involves insight, recognising how we were wronged and who is responsible, and understanding, trying to grasp why it happened. The second, restoration, involves openly offering and receiving forgiveness and rebuilding trust. Restoration, Hargrave suggests, is possible only where there is a relationship to restore. For Debbie, with a man who had done her such harm, salvage was the realistic goal. It allowed her to move beyond self-blame and bitterness and to recover something from the wreckage.
She was also helped by Lewis Smedes's book Forgive and Forget, which argues that if we say some people are beyond forgiveness, we give them a power over us they should never have. Forgiveness at its fullest takes two people, Smedes says, but it can still be real even if it goes no further than the healing of the one who forgives.
Debbie came to see that her refusal to forgive had kept her holding on to everything connected with Willie: her pain, her shame, her self-pity. That is what she gave up when she forgave him, and only then could real healing begin. She was the one who gained.
She has also wrestled honestly with her feelings about the death penalty, and does not claim to have settled the question. But she ends her book with a striking observation. We do not sing about amazing justice, she notes; we sing about amazing grace. Justice, she says, did nothing to heal her. Forgiveness did.
Debbie's story does not make forgiveness sound easy or quick. It took her years, and it did not mean pretending that what happened was acceptable or that justice did not matter. But it shows that even after the most terrible wrongs, forgiveness can become the door through which healing finally begins, and that the person who forgives is often the first to be set free.
Takeaway: Forgiveness is not pretending that evil was small. It is refusing to let evil keep control of your life. Sometimes the first person forgiveness sets free is the one who forgives.
Source: Debbie Morris with Gregg Lewis, Forgiving the Dead Man Walking (Zondervan, 1998).
Bud Welch and the Survivor Tree of Oklahoma City
On 19 April 1995, a truck bomb destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in the Oklahoma City bombing, killing 168 people. One of them was 23-year-old Julie Welch.
Her father, Bud Welch, later told his story in an article for Guideposts magazine called "Where Healing Begins". From the moment he learned it was a bomb, he wrote, he survived on hate. His anger was fixed on the bombers, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, and like many others he wanted them convicted and executed as quickly as possible.
His feelings first began to shift a few months after the bombing, when he saw McVeigh's father on television. The man looked shattered. Bud remembers thinking: dear God, this man has lost a child too.
A second turning point came in January 1996, when Bud revisited the site where his daughter had died. He noticed an elm tree near the spot where Julie had always parked her car. Despite the damage from the blast, the tree had survived and was even putting out new growth. The thought that came to him then, he wrote, seemed to have nothing to do with new life. It was the sudden, certain knowledge that McVeigh's execution would not end his pain.
Soon afterwards Bud stopped supporting the death penalty for McVeigh, and people noticed. He began receiving invitations to speak about his changing feelings, and one of them came from the Buffalo area of New York, where McVeigh's father lived. Bud knew it was time to meet him.
On 5 September 1998, Bud sat in Bill McVeigh's home. He found an ordinary working man, just like himself. He also met Bill's daughter, Jennifer, who reminded him of Julie's friends. We can't change the past, Bud told them, but we do have a choice about the future.
Afterwards Bud campaigned to save the elm from being bulldozed. Today it is known as the Survivor Tree and stands at the Oklahoma City National Memorial, a memorial to the victims, and also to one father's remarkable journey from hate towards forgiveness.
Bud's journey did not erase his grief, but it changed what his grief did to him.
Takeaway: Forgiveness often begins when we see the humanity of those connected to our enemy. Hate kept Bud Welch alive for a while, but only forgiveness let him live again.
Source: Bud Welch, "Where Healing Begins", Guideposts, May 1999.
The Red Jelly Stain on the Mauve Sofa
Pastor and author John Ortberg tells a story about the first new piece of furniture he and his wife ever bought. They traded in their old Volkswagen Beetle and bought a mauve sofa.
The salesman at the furniture shop tried to warn them when he discovered they had small children. You don't want a mauve sofa, he said. Get something the colour of dirt. But with the naive optimism of young parents, they insisted that they knew how to handle their children. Give us the mauve sofa, they said.
From that day on, everyone in the house knew the number one rule. Don't sit on the mauve sofa. Don't touch the mauve sofa. Don't play near the mauve sofa. Don't eat on it, breathe on it, look at it or even think about it. It was like the forbidden tree in the Garden of Eden: of every other chair in the house you may freely sit, but of this sofa you may not sit, for on the day you sit on it, you shall surely die.
Then came the Fall.
One day a stain appeared on the mauve sofa. A red stain. A red jelly stain.
Ortberg's wife, who had chosen the sofa and adored it, lined up their three children in front of it: Laura, aged four, Mallory, two and a half, and Johnny, six months old. Do you see that, children? she asked. That's a stain. A red jelly stain. The man at the shop says it is never coming out. Not ever. Do you know how long forever is? That's how long we're going to stand here until one of you tells me who put the stain on the mauve sofa.
Mallory broke first. With trembling lips and tears in her eyes, she said that Laura had done it. Laura passionately denied it. Then there was a long silence. Nobody said a word.
Ortberg knew they would not confess. They had never seen their mother so upset, and they feared they would spend eternity in the time-out chair. But he also knew they would not confess for a simpler reason. He was the one who had put the red jelly stain on the sofa, and he wasn't saying anything.
The truth is that all of us have stained the sofa. God offers us forgiveness, yet many of us struggle to feel forgiven. That is one reason God has given us the practice of confession. When we confess honestly, we are set free from guilt, and we begin to see our sin, and God's grace, in a new way.
Confession is not about grovelling. It is about finally telling the truth, so that grace can reach us.
Takeaway: We have all stained the sofa. Confession, owning our part instead of hiding or blaming, is the doorway through which forgiveness becomes real to us.
Source: John Ortberg, The Life You've Always Wanted (Zondervan, 1997).
Building Bridges: The Carpenter and Two Brothers
A parable.
Once upon a time, two brothers farmed neighbouring properties. For more than forty years they worked side by side, sharing machinery and helping each other whenever it was needed. Then one day a rift opened between them. It began with a small misunderstanding, grew into a major disagreement and finally exploded into an exchange of bitter words, followed by months of angry silence.
One morning the older brother, Pete, was out in his fields when a utility truck pulled up. A man climbed out carrying a carpenter's toolbox. He said he was looking for a few days' work, and wondered whether Pete had any small jobs he could do.
As a matter of fact I do, said Pete. See that creek down there? It's the border between my farm and my brother's. He keeps it nice and deep so I can't set foot on his precious land. Well, I'll oblige him. Take that timber over by the barn and build me a fence along there, a really tall one, so I never have to look across at my brother or his farm again.
The carpenter was glad of the work. No worries, he said. I understand. Just show me your post-hole digger and I'll get the job done.
So the carpenter set to work, while Pete drove into town for the cattle sale. When Pete came home at sunset, he could hardly believe what he saw.
There was no fence. Instead, the carpenter had built a bridge across the creek. And walking across it towards him, hand outstretched, was his younger brother. After everything I've said and done these past months, the brother said, I can't believe you'd still reach out to me like this. You're right. It's time to put it behind us.
The two brothers met in the middle of the bridge and embraced. Then they turned to see the carpenter lifting his toolbox onto his shoulder. No, wait, Pete called. Stay a few more days. I've got plenty of other jobs for you.
I'd love to stay, the carpenter replied, but I have more bridges to build.
Jesus, the carpenter of Nazareth, came to build the same kind of bridge.
Takeaway: Jesus the carpenter still builds bridges where we want fences. Forgiveness is choosing the bridge, even when the hurt tells us to build a wall.
Source: Traditional parable; author unknown.
Final thoughts
From a Nicaraguan prison to a father under an elm tree, these stories about forgiveness show that it is never cheap and never automatic. But in each one, forgiveness opened a future that bitterness would have closed.
For further reading, Sopranu reviews Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven, a hard look at what happens when revenge has its way.
If someone's name came to mind as you read, that may be the place to start.
More stories you may like:
These stories are retold in our own words for teaching and reflection. Sources are credited under each story.