The Key to Freedom
Jesus didn’t tell us to forgive in order to bless our enemies. For instance, abusive people seldom admit they did anything wrong. Tell them “You’re forgiven” and they become puzzled and dismissive
No, forgiveness cleanses us. It clears out our resentment, frustration, self-pity and bitterness.
Forgiveness is the key to set you free. (M.H. Puccini)
Originally the artist drew a plump red heart on a white background with a black keyhole and key. But I inverted the colors in Photoshop.
Symbolically, this image of holding onto bitterness is more powerful.
The Blue Heart’s Symbolic Meaning
The Black Background. Unforgiveness darkens our emotional world and keeps the pain alive. A person’s past words or actions continue to have tremendous power over us. The offender can be dead for years, yet a single bad memory in the morning can ruin our whole day.
The White Keyhole. It looks is like light shining into the darkness. God has complete emotional healing for each of us.
The Blue Heart. The blue heart symbolizes depression. This heart is also hollow; it lacks oxygen and life. Life returns when we forgive and release the offense into God’s hands.
A Remarkable Story
A Dutch woman named Corrie ten Boom and her family worked to save the Jews from the Nazis in occupied Holland, during World War II.
Eventually these Christians were caught by the Gestapo. Her 70-year-old Father Casper died in custody. Even worse, Corrie and her older sister Betsy became prisoners in Ravensbruck, a concentration camp in Germany. Both were in their 50s. Yet God went there with them. He helped Corrie smuggle a Bible into the camp. Thanks to the ten Boom sisters’ witnessing, many doomed women accepted Christ as their Lord and Savior before they died.
After several months imprisonment, Betsy died in December, 1944.. Just a few weeks later, the Nazis unexpectedly released her younger sister on New Years Day 1945.
After the war ended, Corrie discovered her freedom had been due to a clerical error. One week later, all the women prisoners of her age group were executed in Ravensbruck.
This Christian woman experienced true evil and horror, which makes her words about the inner healing which comes from forgiveness even more powerful.
The Best Advertisement for Forgiveness
John and Elizabeth Sherrill helped Corrie tell her story in her 1st book, The Hiding Place. In the preface, the authors talk about the 1st time they met this remarkable Dutch woman.
It was in May, 1968, that we attended a church service in Germany. A man was speaking about his experiences in a Nazi concentration camp. His face told the story more eloquently than his words; pain-haunted eyes, shaking hands that could not forget. He was followed at the the lectern by a white-haired woman, broad of frame and sensible of shoe, with a face that radiated love, peace, joy. But—the story that these two people were relating was the same! She too had been in a concentration camp, seen the same savagery, suffered the same losses. His response was easy to understand, but hers?
The second speaker was Corrie ten Boom.
My Spiritual Point:
When Corrie returned to Holland, she opened a home for people who had suffered deep wounds during the war.
She discovered that every person had one specific individual to forgive. The ones who forgave their enemy healed. Those who refused and held onto their bitterness stayed emotionally traumatized.
Often our enemies don’t deserve forgiveness, but that isn’t the point.
Do you want to be healed?
The original heart image was supplied by Morguefile.com. The windmill image came from Pixabay.com.
Resources:
The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom, Elizabeth Sherrill, John Sherrill
For the curious, here is the original artwork that my blue heart is based off of.
