“Merciful Father, I have squandered my days with plans of many things. This was not among them. But at this moment, I beg only to live the next few minutes well. For all we ought to have thought, and have not thought; all we ought to have said, and have not said; all we ought to have done, and have not done; I pray thee God for forgiveness.”
This prayer, which I believe is common to both Christianity and Islam, is found in of all places, the movie “The Thirteenth Warrior”, which no one liked but me.
The hardest thing on earth is to be truly repentant. To stand in the face of someone and say “I have done wrong, I am sorry, please forgive me.” Once, when I was young my Dad caught me in a lie. It was a bad lie, one for which I am still very ashamed. Dad told me that my punishment was going to be to apologize to the people I had hurt; no grounding or soap in the mouth or belt across my you know what. Just a face to face admission of what I had done. I cried my eyes out suffering through those apologies.
The first step toward the resurrection this week is to be truly repentant. To look God in the eye (so to speak) and say, I am sorry for what I have done and mean it. It’s hard. If it was easy we would do it more often. We can practice by apologizing to others. Who do you owe an apology to? How can you be truly repentant before God, who knows your heart, if you have not apologized to the person you have wronged?
Walter
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