The devotions on the topic of forgiveness this week have all been thought-provoking and inspiring. And I thank each and every contributor to this beautiful effort. But one really stood out, in my opinion. The one I refer to is the one which quoted Mark Twain:
“Forgiveness is the scent the violet leaves on the heel that crushes it.”
When you really stop to think about it, that is such a beautiful and appropriate description of a really kind of amorphous concept. I had never heard or read this particular quote from one of our great thinkers before reading it here on Call for Love. So, I particularly thank the author of this devotion.
All the attributes of forgiveness are contained within those thirteen words. It is a miracle of brevity.
The scent doesn’t excuse the crushing. The violet remains crushed.
The scent doesn’t erase the crushing. What is done is, quite frankly, done.
The scent doesn’t forget the wrongdoing of the heel. How can it? The heel has crushed the violet. That cannot be changed.
The scent doesn’t judge if the heel is worthy of its fragrance. It rides on the heel, worthy or not.
The scent doesn’t ask if the heel is sorry for crushing the bloom. The fragrance remains as a silent testament and memorial to the crushed.
There are no mitigating circumstances to minimize the action of the heel in crushing. Crushed is crushed.
And yet, the heel is blessed by the scent of the bloom it has crushed, perhaps, without even being aware of the damage it has done.
At the time I first read the quote, I commented that in a larger sense WE (his children) are the scent the violet (Michael Jackson) left on the heel that crushed it (the world we live in.) We remain to bless … in His Name … the heel that crushed him. May we each, in our own way, be equal to the challenge.
As the scent of the crushed bloom doesn’t excuse, erase or forget the crushing, we are obliged as the fragrance of the flower, to not expect excuses, erasures or forgetting.
Similarly, it is not our place to judge worthiness or remorse in regards to the callousness of the heel, but only to bless it with our fragrance to the best of our ability.
In this, we have the most wonderful example to follow that the world has known in a very, very long time.
May our fragrance bless our world with strength, beauty and the LIGHT that Michael Jackson has embedded into each of our souls.
~ by Jan Carlson
Copyright © 2011 by Charlene Burgess
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