One fact transforms bitterness into forgiveness

SEVERAL months, maybe years, a gulf between you and peace has come and since widened, because of an interpersonal conflict. Perhaps.

You’ve tried everything in your grasp, and your search for peace and reconciliation continues.

One fact transforming bitterness into the acceptance that produces the peace to forgive is this: we don’t have all the information. It’s a fact that drives us into the belly of understanding, for the pure fact of our recognition of our lack of understanding.

Life’s deepest level of understanding is recognition
of how much we don’t yet understand.

There are details about the person we withhold forgiveness from that we don’t know, yet ought to know about them and the situation.

Information is what holds us adrift from reconciliation. It’s what we yet do not understand. Even as Jesus said of his assailants when on the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing,” we too can reckon upon the same rationale.

We hurt each other when we don’t understand each other.
Conflict is about misunderstanding.
Forgiveness is about understanding.

As soon as we acknowledge our own ignorance, God’s perspective incoming, He gives us a plenteous portion of His grace to extend to others within our relational reach. Just for being honest.

Think about any situation where we range from disagreement to dissent to resentment and there is something vitalising, tantalising, that’s missing. As soon as we gain crucial knowledge, understanding comes, then forgiveness.

Understanding germinates when we’re informed,
 producing the compassion to forgive.

It may not be too long a bow to draw to say,

all unforgiveness comes from misunderstanding.

When we’re bitter, perhaps the best question to ask to be reconciled to peace, and the other person or group, is this: what information am I lacking here? What information, if it came to hand, would turn my understanding on its head?