Annal 68: Tale from Apartheid

Last night I finished reading Philip Yancey's What Good is God? and I am still pondering the effects of it on my life.  I started reading this book back in December or January, and it has been a slow going process, but to be honest I am fairly certain the timing has been God's.  I have hinted in past entries of some of the things that have been going on in my life over the last six months (ie. my mother getting unjustly fired, the seeming loss of friendships due to being single but also because of switching churches).  In April, about two weeks after my mother left her job, I picked up this book and was reading about Yancey's visit to South Africa in 2006.  In it he mentions something that I want to share.

"Bill Clinton tells of a conversation he had with Nelson Mandela.  'Didn't you really hate them for what they did?' Clinton asked.  Mandela replied, 'Oh, yeah, I hated them for a long time.  I broke rocks every day in prison, and I stayed alive on hate.  They took a lot away from me.  They took me away from my wife, and it subsequently destroyed my marriage.  They took me away from seeing my childre grow up.  They abused me mentally and physically.  And one day, I realized they could take it all except my mind and my heart.  Those things I would have to give to them, and I simply decided not to give them away.'

"Clinton pressed him.  'Well, what about when you were getting out of prison?  I got my daughter Chelsea up and we watched you on television as you walked down that dirt road to freedom.  Didn't you hate them then?'

"Mandela said, 'As I felt the anger rising up, I thought to myself, They have already had you for twenty seven years.  And if you keep hating them, they'll have you again. And I said, I want to be free. And so I let it go.  I let it go.'"

Yancey goes on to describe how Mandela's attitude set an example for all of South Africa.  He later visits the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg and while there a young, white South African says, "In view of what we did and how we treated them, they had the right to take every one of us whites, line us against a wall, and shoot us in the head."

Forgiveness.

It seems like it should be such a simple concept, but the practice of it is perhaps the most difficult lesson I have ever learned.  It has only been in the last month or so, as I have been "coming into my own" as my sister puts it, that I realized how much hurt I have held onto from the past.  It is hard to lose friendship, and even harder to watch pain being done to those you love and hold dear.  And yet in the view of what I quoted above, who am I to hold onto my bitterness?

Shortly after the issue with my mom, my family was watching The Passion of the Christ for Good Friday.  I came away thinking, "Who am I to withhold that which Christ so freely gave?"

I sometimes think that as singles we can get into the mindset that everyone is somewhat against us: friends, strangers, church members, even God.  I know I sometimes fall into that.  We become a minority in many Christian settings, and seem like the group that people just don't know how to handle.

But in the view of so much grace, who am I to hold onto hurts that, quite frankly, pale in comparison to so much other pain out there.  I know God is still working on me, and I know that forgiveness can be a long and painful road, but it is a road I need to walk, and I know that there is One who will help me along it, for He is the one who made that road.

Such is the life of a Christian single.