Ok!!! It’s Spring!!! It’s a new season for new beginnings, rebirth and renewal. Everything is bright and beautiful. Flowers budding and sunny weather all around. It is really a beautiful scenery. It comes after a dreadful chilly and wet winter. It feels like a ray of sunshine after a cold and rainy day. Its beauty is as colourful as the rainbow after the storm… Ok, ok… that’s just about what I know and see of this season. You see, I am not a nature person, let alone a flower person. But the bottom line is that Spring represents beautiful new beginnings.
What I want to talk about though is not geographical season of Spring. But that which we as people go through in our daily walk of life. You see, we all go through seasons, just like the seasons of the year. The timings and durations may not be the same though, won’t we all be blessed if they were because then we’d be able to prepare for the changing seasons. The seasons of the year are in three month periods; sad thing about ours is that they vary from one day to years. Now, we get our Autumns when the winds of life blow at us like nobody’s business, when we find ourselves having to push through everything and anything just to get by. We also get our Summers, when all is well. Summer is the season of abundance where everything is going just right. In Summer, we are all happy and jolly. We plan our best times for this season because we are hopeful that nothing would go wrong. And then, we get our Winters. Yeah, that’s the season where you kinda get a combination of all the other seasons. This is the season where you feel nailed on almost every corner of your life. In Winter you can get anything from raging storms to hurricanes, bolts and lightening, floods, snow and cold like you won’t believe. Sometimes you hardly ever see the sun or even a tiny spark of light. This is the time that anything that could go wrong, goes absolutely wrong. You find that things at work are going horribly wrong, and you look forward to going home to a peaceful and more loving environment, but then when you get home you find yourself in another battle. You find yourself looking around and finding no safe place to run to, sometimes even the people around you become such pains in the leg that you’d rather not even see talk to them, let alone see them. You just feel like isolating yourself to a place of your own where you can hide away from all that is hitting against you and only come out once the season is over. It becomes so easy to have your toes stepped on and making uncalled for rivals and enemies. That is just typical of someone going through a winter season of their lives. In Xhosa we would say “unochuku” which basically means they’re just being oversensitive.
With all these raging storms in one’s life, the only true weapon that can guarantee breakthrough is prayer. I say guaranteed breakthrough because prayer gives hope that the season will pass. God says in His word in Psalm 139:1“O LORD, you have searched me [thoroughly] and have known me. 2You know my down sitting and my uprising; You understand my thought afar off. 3You sift and search out my path and my lying down, and You are acquainted with all my ways. 4For there is not a word in my tongue [still unuttered], but, behold, O Lord, You know it altogether. This means that even before you enter into this season, God knows. So, already… before the storms even hit us. God already knew they were coming and He already had an action plan. He also knows our own plan of how to handle things when they come, which most of the time never work. I can just see him closing His eyes with His hand on His head saying “there she goes again trying to fight My battles”. This is why He assures us in Isaiah 43:2 that “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you, and through the rivers, they will not overwhelm you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned or scorched, nor will the flame kindle upon you. 3For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior…” this is so that we can trust in His capabilities of taking us through the hardest seasons of our lives.
Where I was going with this from the onset was on the subject of new beginnings. The beginning of a new season, Spring; the restoration and rebirth. One cannot have a new beginning while dragging the old hurt and pain along. A new layer of skin will not grow on a wound that has not healed. With winter, it is inevitable that one would contract flu or cold and cold blisters and such. And in most cases the infection becomes so severe that a course of antibiotics is needed to treat it You see, while we go through our winters, we either end up casualties or we cause our own, sometimes even both and in these cases, the antibiotic I am talking about is forgiveness. So…
What is forgiveness? The dictionary meaning is that “Forgiveness is typically defined as the process of concluding resentment, indignation or anger as a result of a perceived offense, difference or mistake, or ceasing to demand punishment or restitution. The Oxford English Dictionary defines forgiveness as 'to grant free pardon and to give up all claim on account of an offense or debt'.” So it is clear that forgiveness it the act that would take place when there's a wrong committed against another. An offence often comes with pain, hurt, heartache, resentment, anger, revenge and all the likes. And which, when we look at them closely are all negative emotions which are detrimental to one's emotional, physical and spiritual wellbeing. I will be lying if I said forgiveness was easy. Forgiveness is the one thing that is pivotal to one’s peace and happiness and yet it so difficult to do. It is the one component of our wellbeing that is dependent on us, the one that no one can do for you, motivate or even force you to do.
Forgiveness is a gift you give yourself.
~Suzanne Somers
Forgiveness is the process of removing that hard, dark, ugly layer from a wound, to allow it to breathe and heal completely. It can be painful, especially when the wound is still a bit new. The possibility of blood coming out is inevitable. Sometimes you might find that you may have just opened another small little one inside of it. But that all leads to healing, the complete and full restoration. Forgiveness can be the most painful way to acquiring peace and joy in your heart and life. But think about it this way, that its temporary pain for permanent peace and everlasting happiness. Its freedom....
Forgiveness is the economy of the heart... forgiveness saves the expense of anger, the cost of hatred, the waste of spirits.
~Hannah More
So today, this Spring day of 2011. Won't you make the decision to forgive? Forgive yourself or another person? Won’t you take the first hard but essential step to your healing and restoration? Won't you release yourself and any person whose mistakes have hurt you from the anger and resentment? Won't you empty your heart of all those negative and harmful emotions to open a space for the good ones? While you're doing that... Won't you allow God to forgive you? Not only will you have eternal peace but eternal life is guaranteed.
Start afresh today. Have a new beginning, a rebirth and a regrowth.
Happy Spring Day!!! And may this day be the beginning of new and great things for each and every one of you.
Be blessed
P
No comments:
Post a Comment