Forgive

Many of us had a pen pal when we were children. When one Black woman was young, she had a pen pal who lived in an all-white neighborhood. One day, the pen pal invited her to the school carnival. The woman recounts how she was excited to meet her friend in person for the first time and play together at the carnival. Her mother dressed her in a freshly washed and ironed sundress and neatly combed her hair.

The experience started out fun as the two young girls from different racial backgrounds met and then attended the carnival. But it quickly turned sour as two boys started to follow their every move. Whatever games the girls tried to play, the boys hounded them for the sole purpose of harassing the young Black girl and calling her every nasty racial slur they could think of.

The two girls tried their best to ignore the boys and to not let their cruelness dampen what was supposed to be a special outing together, but the boys wouldn’t stop. They were relentless, and sadly no adult stepped in to help. The woman said she never told her parents about it; she just wanted to forget the whole evening. But she never wrote back to her pen pal.

Years later, the woman realized that the hurtful experience had left a significant emotional scar on her heart and affected her entire childhood. But then she learned how Jesus forgave the people who mocked Him, abandoned Him, and killed Him when He was on the cross. That knowledge gave her the strength decades later to forgive those boys, realizing that they, too, probably didn’t understand what they were doing or how their words would negatively impact her for the rest of her life.

The woman understood that Jesus died for all sinners, including those two little boys, her pen pal, her, and all the apathetic adults at the carnival who stood by and witnessed the boys’ harassment but chose not to help or intervene. And if Jesus forgave them, so could she.

To God alone be glory!