Have you ever noticed how heavy a big bag of potatoes can be? This week as I picked up a bag, I was reminded of a experiment that I read about that a jr high teacher attempted...
The teacher asked her students to bring a clear plastic bag along with a sack of potatoes with them to class. Then, for every person that each student refused to forgive in life, they were to choose a potato and write their name and the date on the potato and place it in the clear plastic bag.
As you can imagine, some of the students bags became quite heavy. The teacher asked the students to carry their bag around with them everywhere they went for a week. They took it with them on the school bus, they placed the bags on their nightstands at night, the bags even went with them when they went to the mall.
It didn't take long before these bags of "potatoes" became a hassle to carry around. And it didn't take too much longer for some of the potatoes to begin to rot and become a nasty, smelly slime.
This teacher taught an awesome lesson here on what unforgiveness can do to someone. Not only does unforgiveness weigh us down (like the sack of potatoes), but before long, having unforgiveness in our heart towards others can begin to give out a bad odor, and become soft and funky looking much like a fungus.
MATTHEW 6:14 "If you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you."
Sometimes, we are like this story .... needlessly lugging around a sack of potatoes! This Thanksgiving week, I wonder if there is someone that you need to forgive? Why not extend the gift of forgiveness to someone and remember that carrying around potatoes can begin to get really heavy!
and that's a piece of my heart today;
5 comments:
As usual Laurie what a wonderful analogy. I am going to remember this story. I know a couple of people who carry their grudges (potatoes, haha) and harbor bitterness and therefore unhappiness in their hearts...or think because their wrong was a legimate one or a LARGE one then of course it is perfectly acceptable to hold on to it. This analogy is perfect way for them to see that in the long run the MAIN person who is affected by this is themselves. There the one carrying the heavy bag, and there the one who can't escape the smell. Everyone else can (and usually does) just move away from them. BTW, your post you wrote yesterday and some other things I wrote and sent my neice yesterday really seemed to help her. She wrote back a good note and seemed encouraged. Most importantly encouraged to get back to church and get her life back on the right track there. If you think about it maybe you could life her in prayer. Have a wonderful day. Blessings to you, Debbie
Laurie, great piece! We must also remember that sometimes this same situation applies to ourselves, and our failing to forgive ourselves for sin when God has forgiven us. An example of this is from the film The Mission, with Robert Deniro as the ex-slave catcher/trader who joined a group of monks and as they went on their journey to reach a band of natives to minister to, Robert Deniro dragged behind him all his armour that he had worn in his former life. This caused him to stumble and fall several times, and when at one point one of the priests cut the rope holding his huge net of a burden, sending the armour falling over the cliff, Robert Deniro went back down and retrieved it. God forgives us, so we need to also learn to forgive ourselves for things that we did in the past that we have held up to God.
What a wonderful illustration! Of course that is exactly what happens. According to the scriptures, we really don't have a choice in forgiveness!Jesus was so merciful to forgive us, how do we get to the point when we "won't" forgive others. Blessings to you!
Great post Laurie! And this can apply to so many other things...like caring around our burdens and trying to do it all on our own...eventually they way us down. Thanks for being you and sharing such a powerful message!
Such a good post.
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