Rent Free

It is often said "Holding a grudge is letting someone live in your head rent-free." When we put it that way, holding a grudge sounds horrible. Yet daily we hear people say "I will never forget this or that." People are letting someone have control over a part of their life and don't see that it's not hurting the one they are holding resentment against, matter of fact, it's hurting us. Tonight I found out that someone is still holding on to resentment over something I did. When I found out about it, I actually laughed at the fact because it was so silly.

Almost ten years ago, I had a friend purchase a bottle of wine and give it to me as a gift. When I moved out of my parents house, I took the wine with me. A couple of years later, I had a dinner guest and we drank the wine. I gave the friend the remaining wine and after she was finished I got my bottle back because it was a nice bottle. When the person who thought they should get the bottle of wine found out they got angry. Well tonight it was brought up again, and it's been nearly 5 years since I drank the bottle of wine.

Normally I don't post the teachings of non-Christians, but I really think Buddha was on to something, he supposedly said "That anger (resentment) is like holding on to a hot coal to throw at someone; yet you are the one who gets burned!"

Even the Bible states in Ephesians 4:31 Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from your along with all malice. Leviticus 19:18 You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.

You see we can't hold a grudge over anything; in fact by holding a grudge or holding onto resentment we are not allowing God to freely work in our lives. Instead we are allowing only anger and hatred to be a part of our lives. I feel sorry for the person who holding on to their resentment over a bottle of wine; it's really sad. Yet they aren't hurting me, they are hurting themselves and that is the saddest thing of all.

Tonight my prayer is that God will allow me to continue to be a person who forgives and forgets; that just as He no longer remembers my sins and they are as far removed as the east is from the west that I can be that kind of person.