About ten years ago, my car was broken into.
Wallet. Cards. Cash. License. iPad.
All gone.
Of course, it was raining. All of my car doors were ajar and my trunk was wide open. On the driveway, my suit coat was crumpled up into a ball and supersaturated. It was an out-of-body experience.
The violation stung. But strangely, what unsettled me more was my own carelessness—falling asleep on the couch the prior evening, leaving the window cracked just enough to make the theft possible. So I sat the next day in silence, trying to make sense of it.
Up to that point, I had never really been wronged in any significant way. I knew how fortunate I was. So many live with wounds far deeper than a stolen wallet or a shattered window. This was, in truth, a small offense.
Yet it was enough to awaken something primal in me—the quick and easy instinct to condemn.
They’re probably a junkie, I thought. Probably trash. Probably came from a worthless family. Probably a low-life. Probably a deadbeat.
Monkey brain activated.
The truth is that it’s easy to reduce another human being to a caricature of their worst action. Our first impulse is to harden our hearts in judgment rather than lead with an empathetic or compassionate disposition.
The person who violated me was still a human being. Not the sum of what they stole. Not the labels I was tempted to assign. But a person. Wounded in their own way. Lost, perhaps. Misguided, for sure. But no less human, no less worthy of grace, no less capable of becoming something more than their choices that rainy morning.
Forgiving them did not mean I was excusing what they had done. It did not erase the violation or make it somehow acceptable. In my case, forgiveness was a refusal to let bitterness root itself within me. It was the decision to see past the harm to the deeper truth—that they were more than the harm they caused.
And so, in the odd quiet of that Saturday, I forgave him. Not because he asked. Not because he deserved it. But because forgiveness was the only way to keep my own heart free.
Forgiveness is never easy. It demands that we release the anger we feel justified in holding. But in that release is the possibility of life—not only for the one who wronged us, but for ourselves.
Question
When you look back on the times you have been hurt, were you quick to condemn… or quick to forgive?
Peace,
Brandon
The Cave
There’s an old story about a group of people imprisoned in a cave since birth. Their feet and necks were chained so they could only stare at a wall in front of them. They had no freedom to turn, no ability to look around.
Wisdom