Quotes About Reconciliation

why God asks us to forgive: because that is what God is like.

Caught up in righteous—and wholly appropriate—revulsion over Serbian atrocities, the world overlooks one fact: the Serbs are simply following the terrible logic of unforgiveness.

Forgiveness may be unfair—it is, by definition—but at least it provides a way to halt the juggernaut of retribution.

forgiveness is an act of faith.

By forgiving, I release my own right to get even and leave all issues of fairness for God to work out.

Though wrong does not disappear when I forgive, it loses its grip on me and is taken over by God, who knows what to do. Such a decision involves risk, of course: the risk that God may not deal with the person as I would want.

Lewis Smedes points out, "The first and often the only person to be healed by forgiveness is the person who does the forgiveness. . . . When we genuinely forgive, we set a prisoner free and then discover that the prisoner we set free was us.

The only thing harder than forgiveness is the alternative.

grace means there is nothing we can do to make God love us less—no amount of racism or pride or pornography or adultery or even murder. Grace means that God already loves us as much as an infinite God can possibly love.

Apart from forgiveness, the monstrous past may awake at any time from hibernation to devour the present. And also the future.

War does not answer war, war does not finish war. The only ending is peace.

Then life taught me a harder lesson, beloved: it is better to forgive an enemy than destroy him.

You will have to reconcile yourself, as I do, as Isabel does, to being the defeated.

That's the unforgivable sin, you know. What is? Refusing to forgive someone. Refusing to forgive someone is the unforgivable sin? I asked incredulously.

Don't know if a dog - or a man, either - ever gets to the place where he can forget as well as forgive, but enough miracles have come my way lately to make me think that this could happen, too.

I supposed we could just ring the doorbell and say, 'Look, let's bury the hatchet and be friends,'" Beth suggested. The girls looked at each other and smiled a little. "Naw," said Caroline. "This is a lot more fun.

Caroline did not ask the boys if they were thinking about the time she threw their mother's chocolate chiffon cake in the river because she thought it was a trick. And the Hatfords certainly did not say anything to the girls about what they had done to Mrs. Malloy's pumpkin chiffon pie that the girls had delivered at their mother's instruction. Both mothers seemed to take to chiffon, that was certain.

I would never go home again in quite the same way, but that was okay too.

the South is the land of Washington, who made our Nation – of Jefferson, who shaped its direction – and of Robert E. Lee who, after gallant failure, urged those who had followed him in bravery to reunite America in purpose and courage." --President John F. Kennedy

He just flat went ahead and "tore down the dividing wall of hostility" (Eph. 2:14 hcsb) that had stood between them for dozens and dozens of long, gray-haired generations. He wasn't appealing for peace but was proclaiming peace—"peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near" (Eph.

it is never too late to make things right.

Strategy 9—Against Your Heart He uses every opportunity to keep old wounds fresh in mind, knowing that anger and hurt and bitterness and unforgiveness will continue to roll the damage forward (Heb. 12:15).

God hasn't given up on us, my friend. Aren't you glad? Thank the Lord, for a second chance.

The fissures ran too deep. The haughtiness and hostility were too ingrained. No one had ever run for office on a Jew-and-Gentile reconciliation platform. They hated the ground the other had walked on. Their aims and desires were mutually exclusive. By a country mile.