Seeing with Grace: The Transformative Power of Forgiveness

In the village of Faken in innermost Freezeland, there lived a long, thin baker named Folk, a righteous man with a long thin chin and a long thin nose. Folk was so upright he seemed to spray righteousness from his thin lips over everyone who came near him, so the people of Faken preferred to stay away. [00:00:46]

Hilda respected her righteous husband and loved him too, as much as he allowed her, but her heart ached for something more from him than his worthy righteousness. And there in the bed of her need lay the seed of sadness. One morning, having worked since dawn to knead his dough for the ovens, Folk came home and found a stranger in his bedroom lying on Hilda's round bosom. [00:01:22]

Hilda's adultery soon became the talk of the tavern and the scandal of the Faken congregation. Everyone assumed that Folk would cast Hilda out of his house, so righteous was he. But he surprised everyone by keeping Hilda as his wife, saying he forgave her as the good book said he should. [00:01:51]

In his heart of hearts, however, Folk could not forgive Hilda for bringing shame to his name. Whenever he thought about her, his feelings toward her were angry and hard. He despised her as if she were a common. When it came right down to it, he hated her for betraying him after he had been so good and so faithful a husband to her. [00:02:09]

But Folk's fakery did not sit well in heaven. So each time that Folk would feel his secret hate toward Hilda, an angel came to him and dropped a small pebble, hardly the size of a shirt button, into Folk's heart. Each time a pebble dropped, Folk would feel a stab of pain like the pain he felt the moment he came on Hilda feeding her hungry heart from a stranger's larder. [00:03:02]

The angel who dropped the pebbles into his heart came to Folk one night and told him how he could be healed of his hurt. There was one remedy, he said, only one for the hurt of a wounded heart. Folk would need the miracle of the magic eyes. He would need eyes that could look back to the beginning of his hurt and see his Hilda not as a wife who betrayed him but as a weak woman who needed him. [00:03:56]

Only a new way of looking at things, things through the magic eyes, could heal the hurt flowing from the wounds of yesterday. Folk protested, "Nothing can change the past," he said. "Hilda is guilty, a fact that not even an angel can change." "Yes, poor hurting man, you are right," the angel said. "You cannot change the past. You can only heal the hurt that comes to you from the past." [00:04:29]

And you can heal it only with a vision of magic eyes. And how can I get your magic eyes, pouted Folk. "Only ask, desiring as you ask, and they will be given you. And each time you see Hilda through your new eyes, one pebble will be lifted from your aching heart." Folk could not ask at once, for he had grown to love his hatred. [00:04:57]

But the pain of his heart finally drove him to want and to ask for the magic eyes that the angel had promised. So he asked, and the angel gave. Soon Hilda began to change in front of Folk's eyes, wonderfully and mysteriously. He began to see her as a needy woman who loved him instead of a wicked woman who had betrayed him. [00:05:30]

The angel kept his promise. He lifted the pebbles from Folk's heart one by one, though it took a long time to take them all away. Folk gradually felt his heart grow lighter. He began to walk straight again, and somehow his nose and his chin seemed less thin and sharp than before. He invited Hilda to come into his heart again, and she came, and together they began a journey into their second season of humble joy. [00:05:58]

Who do you need magic eyes to look at? Who is it that right now you find yourself wanting to see solely in terms of the hurt they inflicted on you rather than as a person who is weak and needy themselves? Maybe it's a spouse, maybe it's an ex, maybe it's a parent, maybe it's a child, maybe it's a boss or a teacher or a coach or somebody you work with. [00:06:46]

Why would it help your physical health if you were to forgive? Why would it help your mental health if you were to forgive? Just again, pick one pebble. Why would it help your relationships if you were to forgive? And then why would it help your spiritual health? What difference would it make in terms of your own spiritual life? [00:09:09]