I wasn’t going to put up another blog post today, but this little tidbit about friendships blew me away. And so I had to post it, and I had to post it now, and this is the right place to post it, so here it is. Even if you’re not religious, I hope you find this uplifting.
As I mentioned last week, I’m editing my dad’s new book, Jots & Tittles: Discovering Truth from the Language of Scripture. (And BTW, I fixed the “L” in the title so that you can’t accidentally misread it.) I’m busy busy busy editing it, because the first edition is on a fast-track to press and way more work than I thought it would be and way behind schedule. And if I didn’t have a sense of urgency about it before, I definitely have one now. So I’ll make this quick.
I just ran across this paragraph, speaking about the fruit of the Spirit, “peace,” in Galatians 5:22. Maybe it’s because of something that recently happened in my life, which I haven’t discussed here (because it involves someone else). But this little jot from Dad’s book really hit me.
If the turmoil of guilt has been calmed by forgiveness; if the nightmare of yesterday’s mistakes, the traumatic hurts of the past, have somehow been reconciled; if you can somehow learn to hug again, learn to recognize kindness for what it really is, with no attached strings or hidden agenda; somehow, if you can learn to accept others and be accepted by them, this is peace!
-TimK