Reconciliation – 和解
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
Have you experienced true reconciliation? That time when you see forgiveness extended in the eyes of another? When you extend forgiveness to someone else. Have you felt the release of stored-up emotion and the change? Profound tears abound on both sides. And in some cases, on the opposite side of an empty chair.
Whether it be with an elderly parent and an adult child, an adult and another family member, spouses, siblings, or another traumatic life event, it’s transformative. The culmination of hard work in counseling, especially for the person holding on to the past, the pain, you name the emotion or event.
Lions
It’s emotional and challenging work to move to a place of a balanced perspective. It takes some people longer than others. It includes validating facts, feelings, and the reality of the event. It’s not about forgetting or ignoring but facing it head-on. As one person described it as “facing a roaring lion behind the door they held shut, believing to let it out would devour them.” In reality, it wasn’t the roaring lion they perceived, and it didn’t devour them as they believed it would. But that’s our effort, and it’s good. However, God has a way of moving in the middle of all that. Because it’s not about our work, albeit it occurs, it’s about His work in and through us.
Have you faced your lion head-on and embraced it, experienced change? Can you exclaim as others have, “I am the beautiful person that He designed despite those events?” Experienced-reconciliation, forgiveness, or restoration. Especially when the person who was injured has long passed?
Choices
Without minimizing the injury or the fact of the event, we choose. It’s simple but a hard choice. To just let it go and lay the demand at the foot of the cross. Not an easy decision, one many avoid for years, for decades, and some nearly their entire life.
But they did. The work and struggles were real and hard-fought. They changed. A heart metamorphosis. The pouring out of God’s love in their hearts or the hearts of others. Hearts, the Spirit softened and transformed into lives that rippled out into every other relationship. It changed not only them but others. Those they knew and those they met.
He transformed them. He can and will change you.
“Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.” – (Rom. 5.1-5)
我们既然因信而被称为义人，就借着我们的主耶稣基督与上帝和好了。 2 我们又靠着祂，借着信进入现在所站的这恩典中，欢欢喜喜地盼望分享上帝的荣耀。 3 不但如此，我们在苦难中也欢喜，因为知道苦难使人生忍耐， 4 忍耐生品格，品格生盼望。 5 这种盼望不会落空，因为上帝的爱借着所赐给我们的圣灵已倾注在我们心中。
罗马书 5:1-5 (CCB)
Kaya ngayong itinuturing na tayong matuwid dahil sa pananampalataya natin sa ating Panginoong Jesu-Cristo, mayroon na tayong magandang relasyon sa Dios. 2 Sa pamamagitan ni Jesus at dahil sa ating pananampalataya, tinatamasa natin ngayon ang biyaya ng Dios at nagagalak tayo dahil sa ating pag-asa na makakabahagi tayo sa kadakilaan ng Dios. 3 At nagagalak din tayo kahit na dumaranas tayo ng mga paghihirap, dahil natututo tayong magtiis. 4 Alam natin na ang pagtitiis ay nagpapabuti sa ating pagkatao.[a] At kung mabuti ang ating pagkatao,[b] may pag-asa tayo na makakabahagi tayo sa kadakilaan ng Dios. 5 At hindi tayo mabibigo sa ating pag-asa dahil ipinadama ng Dios sa atin ang kanyang pagmamahal sa pamamagitan ng Banal na Espiritu na ibinigay niya sa atin.
Roma 5.1-5 (ASND)
Accept the gift.
Then, give it away and watch the ripple.
