How to Forgive: Remember Space Rockets

You ever watched a rocket launch? Probably.

Do the space rockets take all of that equipment surrounding them on the ground, with them up into space? Nope. They leave that baggage behind! It’d weigh them down.

We are like space rockets. When we don’t forgive others, we’re tied down with each attachment being a person we haven’t forgiven.

We can’t get off the ground and soar until we forgive. And like a space rocket, we will not rise until we’ve cut ties with each and every attachment. We cannot soar until we forgive everybody, every single person, not just a lot of them or most of them but every one of them.

And like space rockets, we won’t know how great—how amazing— it feels to truly rise, to have forgiven all, until we actually get up into the skies, higher than we’ve ever been!

And like space rockets, that’s what we’re meant for: the glory and the joy of the skies—not being stuck on the ground in our bitterness and our malice and our grudges.

Imagine seeing a space rocket on the ground that never goes up into the sky…How boring and depressing and a case of “it didn’t live up to its potential.”

That’s us when we don’t forgive!

Like space rockets, it’s not what we’re meant for.

Do the angels watch us, like people in the bleachers at Cape Canaveral, waiting and waiting to watch us ascend? Whereas the rocket-watchers check their watches repeatedly, do the angels look at each of us and say, “I had prayed he/she would have forgiven by now?”

What’re we waiting for? We’re meant to ascend.

A powerful reminder from Jesus to forgive: Matthew 18:23-35

This article originally appeared on Seeking the Mercy in the Mundane.