Where There Is Injury

Elizabeth Elliot Devotional

Title: Where There Is Injury

Have you ever found the taste of revenge sweet?
Does there lurk in your heart, as in mine at
times, a desire for at least the milder forms of
revenge if you have been hurt--a desire to see
the person apologize, an urge to remind him that
he was nasty to you, or even the temptation to
pay him back somehow? It was not God's plan that
man should take revenge. That He has reserved for
Himself, and when we seize that power we are
taking a huge risk. It is, in another form, the
risk Adam and Eve took when they ate the
forbidden fruit--arrogating to themselves powers,
lethal burdens, for which they were never
designed.

What if God paid us for our sins? What if He were
not Love? His mercy is everlasting and has
brought us salvation and forgiveness. Remembering
that, and how we ourselves have offended Him
times without number, shall we dare to retaliate
when someone sins against us? Think of the
measure of forgiveness God has offered us. Think
of the price. Think what the cross means. Then
pray the prayer of St. Francis:

Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace--
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon....
For it is in forgiving that we are forgiven,
It is in dying that we are born again to eternal
life.