Daily Meditation: Letting Go of Old Hurts

This refection is very timely.  It is at Holiday gatherings that old hurts come up and people, who once were part of these gatherings but are no longer due to some real or imagined offense, can take up an inordinate amount of conversation.  Old wounds, some decades old are ripped open and the old "hurt" is back.  Forgiveness is hard.  For me this Holiday season,  it was hard hearing a well-liked colleague from my previous job was retiring and relocating.  As I was "pushed out" of that job, it was hard for me to face the people once more who did the "pushing" in order to say goodbye to my friends.  Thinking of this today,  I was so happy to read this meditation from Fr. Nouwen.

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Friday December 30, 2011       Letting Go of Old Hurts   One of the hardest things in life is to let go of old hurts.  We often say, or at least think:  "What you did to me and my family, my ancestors, or my friends I cannot forget or forgive. ... One day you will have to pay for it."  Sometimes our memories are decades, even centuries, old and keep asking for revenge.   Holding people's faults against them often creates an impenetrable wall.  But listen to Paul:  "For anyone who is in Christ, there is a new creation:  the old order is gone and a new being is there to see.  It is all God's work" (2 Corinthians 5:17-18).  Indeed, we cannot let go of old hurts, but God can.  Paul says:  "God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not holding anyone's fault against them" (2 Corinthians 5:19).  It is God's work, but we are God's ministers, because the God who reconciled the world to God entrusted to us "the message of reconciliation" (2 Corinthians 5:19).  This message calls us to let go of old hurts in the Name of God.  It is the message our world most needs to hear.     Comment on this Daily Meditation.    Visit our website for inspiration, resources, news, events, community. Text excerpts taken from Bread for the Journey, by Henri J.M. Nouwen, ©1997 HarperSanFrancisco. All Scripture from The Jerusalem Bible ©1966, 1967, and 1968 Darton, Longman & Todd and Doubleday & Co. Inc. Photo by V. Dobson.

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