Love keeps no records of wrongs

I have been meditating on 1 Corinthians 13 this week:
  

⁴Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
⁵It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 
⁶Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  
⁷It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
 ⁸Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.
⁹For we know in part and we prophesy in part,  
¹⁰but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears.  
¹¹When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.  
¹²Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
 ¹³And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Those verses have more meaning to me than most will ever know. 

Trust is so hard to gain and so easy to lose. 

I think the problem most people have is truly forgiving. I know I am one of them. How often do you hear "I can forgive, but I can not forget"    It is one of life's great arts to know what to forget and what to remember. People become collectors of grievances and this poisons their souls and drives the love from their hearts. Christ taught the great lesson of forgetting and forgiving. If you keep record of the wrongs committed against you, you are inclined to miss the noble, good and beautiful things in life.


We should remind ourselves of the following verses:


Mark 11:25 "And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins."

Luke 6:37 "Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven."

Romans 12:14 "Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse."

1 John 1:9 "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."

Proverbs 20:22 "Do not say 'I will repay evil'; wait for the Lord, and he will deliver you."

I am thankful that I am able to be forgiving, what I have to constantly work on myself is the forgetting part. As wrong as I know it is, I tend to hold on to past hurts and throw them out in hurtful ways. I have to learn to let them go if I ever want to be able to move forward the right way.  But hey, we are all a work in progress, right?

XOXO