“I forgave you all that debt because you begged me. Shouldn’t you also have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?” (Matthew 18:32-33).

If we are to maintain spiritual freshness-

– we must determine to forgive everyone who hurts us and refuse to nurse a grudge.  

Grudges become glooms! 

A few years after World War II, a Christian Japanese boy at a public speaking contest announced that his subject would be:

“The Sacredness of Work.”  

Some people smiled at his choice, but when they heard his story, their smiles turned to tears.

His parents and home were burned to ashes in the atomic bomb explosion at Nagasaki.  

He was the eldest of three surviving children, and together they knelt in the ashes of their home and prayed to know what to do.  

One of them said: “I know, we can work.” 

So they set to work, gathering bits of tin and boards, and soon they had built a little hut in which to live.

They could have nursed their grudge and become gloomy; instead they forgave, forgot, and went to work. 

No one who wants to maintain spiritual freshness can afford to nurse a grudge.

It will poison both spirit and body.  

Grudges put the whole physical and mental system on a war basis instead of on a peace basis. 

I often tell my counselees they cannot afford to carry grudges or maintain hates.

Such things can make them ill and tire them out.  

A grudge or a resentment is sand in the machinery of living. 

May God teach you how to get the splinters of resentment out of your soul and also out of your body.  

May He also help you to decide that-

– it is the oil of love,

– not the sand of resentments,

– that shall go into the machinery of your life day by day.  

(PR)