Forgiveness and Love

Driving home yesterday, I caught the NPR segment This I Believe: "The Long Road To Forgiveness" by Kim Phuc. She is the nine year old girl in the famous photo of children running through the streets after a napalm attach during the Vietnamese war. She spent over a year in the hospital where she was operated on 17 times. She grew to hate her life because she was not "normal". Kim Phuc talks about spending her days in the library - one of those books was the Holy Bible.

In 1982 she became Christian. She shares with listeners:

It was an amazing turning point in my life. God helped me to learn to forgive — the most difficult of all lessons. It didn't happen in a day and it wasn't easy. But I finally got it. Forgiveness made me free from hatred. I still have many scars on my body and severe pain most days but my heart is cleansed.

Napalm is very powerful but faith, forgiveness and love are much more powerful. We would not have war at all if everyone could learn how to live with true love, hope and forgiveness. If that little girl in the picture can do it, ask yourself: Can you?

An interesting question for us all.