"Forgiveness is a funny thing, isn’t it?"
Stephen Watt was a Wyoming legislator who ran in the Republican primary for governor some years ago. Watt is also a former police officer who was shot in the line of duty nearly twenty years ago.
After the shooting, Watt says he became an angry and aggressive man, so much so that his wife nearly left him. Watt was nearly impossible to live with…until he forgave the man who shot him, a man that he says is now his best friend. During the gubernatorial primary, Watt said that if elected one of the first things he would do would be to pardon Mark Farnham, the man who shot him, who still has at least 35 years left in his sentence.
Forgiveness is a funny thing, isn’t it? You want to be forgiven even when you’re wrong, but you’re not so sure you can forgive someone else when he’s wrong.
The next time you find it hard to forgive someone, remember Stephen Watt forgiving Mark Farnham. Then think about who you need to ask forgiveness from. Then listen to life and make a life, not just a living.
posted by Listen To Life @ 11:31 PM
1 comments
1 Comments:
I can certainly identify with Mr. Watt. Just before Christmas 1975, two months after my wedding, a young man on Christmas leave from a correctional facility strangled my mother to death in a case of mistaken identity. It took me a number of years, but I finally reached the point where I knew I had to forgive him, even though I did not condone what he did. I wrote him a short letter letting him know. I don't know if it was a result of that letter, but I heard from him a while later that he had accepted Christ as his Savior while in prison. He remains there still today, but is now a forgiven child of God.
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