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Excerpted Inspirations #169

Writer: Linda Odhner, with photos by Liz KufsLinda Odhner, with photos by Liz Kufs
Mar 100 min read


I think it is only now that I am old that I see forgiveness as so extremely important, and this is because of something that happens to us in old age. It is the coming round full circle to face your beginnings. Memory of the distant past wakes up in an extraordinary way and you find yourself meeting again not only the joys and sorrows of the past but the sins too. Forgotten cruelties confront you, forgotten lovelessness and cowardice. It may be that you were sorry for these things at the time, but if so you see how poor and inadequate was the sorrow because you so little understood the depths of your own vileness. (And our conception of sin can change as we grow old. What seemed nothing at the time seems hideous now.) But I have been taught that despair is a sin and not to be able to accept the forgiveness of Christ is sacrilege. He told those he healed that their faith would set them free, and as with illness so with sin that is often the root of illness. If we can believe that the sins of broken-hearted sinners are lifted away from us by Christ, then we are set free to rejoice in our freedom with the simplicity of children. Forgiveness is like spring. Flowing so freely to us from our Lord and God it is like sunshine and a west wind. It can make even our old age green and fresh. -Elizabeth Goudge, Radio Talk for Holy Week, BBC Radio Four, 31st March 1972. Typescript in Dr. Mark Dutton’s Archive. Quoted in Christine Rawlins, Beyond the Snow (2015), p. 432

 
 
 

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