Dwelling on the past
"Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you."(NIV) Colossians 3:13
Jimmy kept records of all the wrong people did him in his mobile phone diary. He would peruse over them, convincing himself that he had already forgiven his offenders, however he wants to know what they did. One amazing feeling that he usually experiences after every casual perusal is the fresh feeling of hurt, even worse than the day it happened.
Many of us act like Jimmy. We have memories of all incidents both good and bad. In our leisure times, we go over our mobile phone messages, Facebook messages, emails or diaries and review these incidents. How do we feel after reading these again? Just like Jimmy, we will experience the sensation of these incidents happening again. It has been scientifically proven that our brains can recollect emotions of bad incidents faster than good ones and they feel just as hurting as it happened.
This leads us to the inspiration our Lord gives us. He urges us to forgive and forget just as he does for us. Forgetting about what others do to us does not only depend on our verbal expression, but on actions that will totally erase all those thoughts. These actions may include deleting all messages that are related to the incident or avoiding instances that will bring back memories. We can do little about what our brains can recollect, so let us not dwell on the past by keeping records of the past.