reconciliation from colossians 3

We sometimes sing that hymn, “There is a Green Hill Far Away.” It has the line, “He died that we might be forgiven.” Amen! That’s true. But it’s also true that he died that we might be forgivers—forgi...

Father: You are good and You are strong. You want what is best. You act to bring it about .And you invite us to hold our hearts before You in prayer, so we can participate in what You do. Therefore, w...

Holy Spirit, you have come to reconcile us to each other, but we resist your work to bind us together. We hold onto grudges. Even though we know God has forgiven us in Jesus Christ, we are slow to for...

Lord: In our times of weakness and our hours of need, Yours is the strength that enables us to carry on, Yours the shoulder we rest our heads upon. When our load is heavy and too much to bear, Yours a...

Leader: Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience All: bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against an...

To become peacemakers, then, we must begin with ourselves. We must ask ourselves, “Why do I make cutting remarks to another person? Why do I make demeaning remarks about them?” We must also ask oursel...

During my training [as a therapist], a supervisor once told me, “There’s something likable in everyone,” and to my great surprise, I found that she was right. It’s impossible to get to know people dee...

Corrie ten Boom told of not being able to forget a wrong that had been done to her. She had forgiven the person, but she kept rehashing the incident and so couldn’t sleep. Finally Corrie cried out to ...

God has given us all a message of reconciliation-that God, in Christ, has reconciled the world to himself (2 Corinthians 5:18-19). The first place we are invited to practice this reconciliation is wit...

In any polarized situation, the overriding human tendency is to draw a line with oneself and one’s allies on the good side and the opposing party on the wicked side, with very little attempt made by e...

In November of 1990, as the long struggle for freedom in South Africa was reaching its climax, a group of black and white spiritual leaders from almost all the churches in that land met at a hotel out...

Ernest Hemingway grasped some of the difficulty that characterizes relationships between fathers and sons in his short story, The Capital of the World . The story revolves around a father and his t...

Revenge and forgiveness are major themes of Michael Christopher’s play, The Black Angel. In it, Herman Engel is Nazi general responsible for killing over 200 French Jews. Convicted of his crimes by th...

In her book Family Ministry, Diana Garland relates the following account by R.L. Honeycutt on the origin of the Irish expression “Chancing one’s arm”: On display in St. Patrick’s cathedral in Dublin...

Many promising reconciliations have broken down because, while both parties came prepared to forgive, neither party came prepared to be forgiven.

A good apology has three parts: 1. I’m sorry 2. It’s my fault 3. What can I do to make it right? But most people forget the third part