Article January 19, 2015 Issue

Forgiveness

By Johann, Dresden, Germany

Originally written in German, this article first appeared in the December 2014 Portuguese, Spanish, French, and German editions of The Herald of Christian Science and was adapted for the Sentinel.

One day when I was six, I went sledding with my older brother, Noah. I sat on the sled, and Noah was pulling me along the sidewalk. Suddenly I saw a spot on the pavement without snow. I told him, “Noah, stop! We’ll never make it!” But he answered, “Of course we’ll make it!” However, once we were on the spot without snow, the sled suddenly stopped, and I banged my face with full force on the metal bar at the front of the sled. It really hurt, and my nose started to bleed.

At first, I was very mad at Noah. But my dad said to me right away that I couldn’t fall out of God’s hands. He also said that I shouldn’t blame Noah and shouldn’t start thinking about whose fault it had been. I listened to my dad and let go of all blame and fault-finding, and I forgave Noah. After a couple of minutes the bleeding stopped, and my face didn’t hurt any more.

Now I know that by blaming something or someone else, you won’t solve your problems. You have to let go of that blame and forgive. Take the Bible story of Joseph, for example. His older brothers abandoned him because they were jealous of him. But Joseph forgave his brothers, even despite all the sorrow he’d experienced.