"To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you." - Lewis B. Smedes
Life is full of ups and downs which we may not have control over but how we respond is a 100% within our control
The act of forgiveness like a routine we have to carry out daily because as humans there will always be offenders either at our work place, church, school and wherever we find ourselves but the act of forgiveness gives you control.
As a Christian we see a lot of examples in the bible where people had to forgive one of them being the case of the twin brothers Essua and Jacob.
The story tells us how that Jacob deceived his brother and took his birthday right and went on to take his brothers blessings and Essau wanted to take revenge and although he was blessed moved to and fro until he had an encounter with his brother and then forgave him before he became settled.
This goes to show that when you carry anger in your heart towards others you naturally become unsettled and bitter and the truth is nothing good comes from a heart of bitterness.
The flip side to this also is self forgiveness sometimes ago I did a business with a friend I made some mistakes which she turned against me and said so many things I apologize to her but found my self almost getting into depression until I had to forgive my self.
I had to start reaffirming to my self it was a mistake and just had learned from it and after a while I was able to overcome so while we go about forgiving others for their offences.
We are also humans and have the tendency to offend others but beyond them forgive you you have to forgive yourself because living with guilt kills a person silently.
And I bring it all home while we forgive because we are humans and we have memories it is difficult to forget about what have transpired in the past except the in a case of a memory loss because even if a person doesn't remember the whole event certain situations might lead to flashbacks.
But you see like I said before while we do not have power over what might have happened we have power over the way we react to situations. So we must learn the lessons that are to be learnt from past event and move on but the memories are always there to remind us never to make such mistakes again.
So when we forgive people who have wronged us even when they don't deserve to be forgiven we express a nature of God that is superior to human understanding because God also sent his son Jesus to die for our sins of mankind and that was forgiveness in display.
Moreover when we forgive people especially those who thought we will take revenge on them we keep a coal of fire in them because forgiveness is a divine responsibility we owe to mankind