Quote

Their pain [the injurer's pain at having injured you] and your pain create the point and counterpoint for the rhythm of reconciliation. When the beat of their pain is a response to the beat of yours, they have become truthful in their feelings...they have moved a step closer to a truthful reunion.

Lewis B. Smedes

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Lewis B. Smedes
Age: 81 †
Born: 1921
Born: August 20
Died: 2002
Died: December 19
Author
Civil Servant
Lewis Benedictus Smedes
Point
Rhythm
Counterpoint
Pain
Beat
Feelings
Beats
Reunion
Become
Response
Reconciliation
Moved
Injured
Step
Truthful
Steps
Closer
Create
Forgiveness

More quotes by Lewis B. Smedes

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It takes one person to forgive, it takes two people to be reunited.
Lewis B. Smedes
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You can forgive someone almost anything. But you cannot tolerate everything...We don't have to tolerate what people do just because we forgive them for doing it. Forgiving heals us personally. To tolerate everything only hurts us all in the long run.
Lewis B. Smedes
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I learned that gratitude is the best feeling I would ever have, the ultimate joy of living.
Lewis B. Smedes
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Forgiving does not erase the bitter past. A healed memory is not a deleted memory.
Lewis B. Smedes
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The only way to heal the pain which will not heal itself is to forgive the person who hurt you. Forgiveness heals the memory's vision. ... You set a prisoner free, but you discover the real prisoner was yourself.
Lewis B. Smedes
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To miss out on joy is to miss out on the reason for your existence.
Lewis B. Smedes
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The longer we hate, the harder it is to heal us.
Lewis B. Smedes
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The first and often only person to be healed by forgiveness is the person who does the forgiveness... When we genuinely forgive, we set a prisoner free and then discover that the prisoner we set free was us.
Lewis B. Smedes
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My wife has lived with at least five different men since we were wed - and each of the five has been me.
Lewis B. Smedes
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Don't do it quickly, but don't wait too long... If we wait too long to forgive, our rage settles in and claims squatter's rights to our souls.
Lewis B. Smedes
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God is the original, master forgiver. Each time we grope our reluctant way through the minor miracle of forgiving, we are imitating his style. I am not at all sure that any of us would have had imagination enough to see the possibilities in this way to heal the wrongs of this life had he not done it first.
Lewis B. Smedes
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When forgiveness is necessary, don't wait too long. We must begin to forgive, because without forgiving, we choke off our own joy we kill our own soul. People carrying hate and resentment can invest themselves so deeply in that resentment that they gradually define themselves in terms of it.
Lewis B. Smedes
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Gandhi was right: if we all live by 'an eye for an eye' the whole world will be blind. The only way out is forgiveness.
Lewis B. Smedes
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You and I were created for joy, and if we miss it we miss the reason for our existence. If our joy is honest joy, it must somehow be congruous with human tragedy. This is the test of joy's integrity. It is compatible with pain. Only the heart that hurts has a right to joy.
Lewis B. Smedes
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Hope is to our spirits what oxygen is to our lungs. Lose hope and you die. They may not bury you for awhile, but without hope you are dead inside. The only way to face the future is to fly straight into it on the wings of hope....hope is the energy of the soul. Hope is the power of tomorrow.
Lewis B. Smedes
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We feel guilty for what we do. We feel shame for what we are.
Lewis B. Smedes
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Forgiving is tough. Excusing is easy. What a mistake it is to confuse forgiving with being mushy, soft, gutless, and oh, so understanding. Before we forgive, we stiffen our spine and we hold a person accountable. And only then, in tough-minded judgment, can we do the outrageously impossible thing: we can forgive.
Lewis B. Smedes
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Any moment that opens us up to the reality that life is good is a parable of the supreme end for which we were made.
Lewis B. Smedes
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When we forgive evil we do not excuse it, we do not tolerate it, we do not smother it. We look the evil full in the face, call it what it is, let its horror shock and stun and enrage us, and only then do we forgive it.
Lewis B. Smedes
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A wise judge may let mercy temper justice but may not let mercy undo it.
Lewis B. Smedes