
Why is forgiveness so difficult?
Recently I watched a documentary about Danny Abdullah, a father who lost his three children, who meets the man who killed them. The clip is very emotional and very sad but also very uplifting and a beautiful example of forgiveness. If you want to watch it - the link is below (though I would encourage parents to watch it without children first then decide if they want their child to see it depending on their age). Watching made me reflect on how difficult it is to forgive.
Some of the thinking that stops us from forgiving:
Why should I forgive a person who has never apologised?
I’m still dealing with the consequences of how that person hurt me, so I’m not about to forgive that person.
I’ll forgive him/her when s/he proves that s/he has changed.
I refuse to let that person back into my life, so forgiveness is not an option.
What that person did to me wasn’t right so I can’t bring myself to let him/her off the hook.
Forgiveness is impossible if we believe we must first receive an apology from the person who offended us. Likewise, if we are expecting that person to show remorse or evidence of having changed. We can also tend to believe that if we forgive someone, we are giving them a license to hurt us again. And we probably withhold our forgiveness because we don’t feel another person has earned it.
By withholding forgiveness, we are saying “You will never be able to make this right.” But what we are ultimately saying is: “I will always hold onto this pain.” When we are stuck like that, we end up living with the burden of bitterness. Instead, we can live freely by freely forgiving. When God forgave us of the debt of our sin, He expected us to then forgive others of their debts toward us (Ephesians 4:32).
When we open our hearts to God’s healing process by saying “Just as You have forgiven me of my offenses toward You, I release this person who has offended me into Your hands and trust You will take care of the situation.”
Reflection – Are we finding it hard to forgive someone at the moment? Can we make that first move to forgive – and release ourselves?
We won’t be letting the other person off the hook. We will, instead be releasing ourselves to live freely by freely forgiving.
How can we be role models to our children? Are we able to have differences with others but still hold them in positive regard? What have our children learned from us about forgiveness?
Link to Danny Abdullah interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzc9VAKfCbI
(You may need tissues handy as I am pretty sure you will be moved by this story and hopefully inspired to think about forgiveness.)
PAM issues
We hope that PAM will be up and running soon. The company that manages PAM had some serious cyber security issues. We were assured that no data from Antonine College was compromised. However, they did need to work on their system to meet higher risk assessment guidelines and that is what has taken time. I was informed that we would receive a further update this week. Hopefully they are close to re-opening PAM for us.
My apologies for any inconvenience and I thank you for your patience.
- Ms Joanne Bacash






