Lay Down the Burden

I'm fast approaching the legacy years. Seems like yesterday that I was a young man. When I reflect back on the span of time between then and now, I see a lot of things I wish I had done differently. I know this is true for just about everyone who passes over the half-century mark. But the past was lived just as it was, right and wrongly. We can't change it. We're beings bound to the laws of time.

We can lay down the burdens, however. If we're the guilty party, then we can't free ourselves until we've confessed to God himself in honest, deep and penetrating rememberance. He'll see right through our falsehood, our coverings and any pretentions we have about the matter.

My advice for the guilty is hold back nothing. Lay it all out before God or you won't be moving forward. In my own case, this took time, several nights alone on one specific incidence, a lot of nights and searching days on others. But I can stand now, cleansed and renewed, looking forward because I confessed everything to the best of my ability to remember--everything.

If you are a victim of someone's guilt, I'd say to you the same thing. Lay down the burden of unforgiveness and bitterness. Hard to do, huh? It's probably more difficult to do that than it is to ask forgiveness for your own guilt.

I once was confronted with a situation in which I had to forgive someone close to me for what I felt had been a great injustice and a lot of hurt. I had suffered greatly from their outspoken judgement and what I believed was an errant misinterpretation of who I was. When I approached the moment, I had to confess to God that I could not forgive that person on my own. I simply did not have it in my heart to forgive this injury. So I told God that.

Knowing He is the source of all forgiveness and that Christ died for my sins as well as yours, to catch them up in His Resurrection and take them before the Father of all creation from whence forgiveness is handed down--knowing I could not do this on my own, I asked Him to intercede through my heart. I asked God to move through me in spirit and show me how to forgive the one who had injured me, show me how to use His Divine Forgiveness. I was moments away from the actual necessity and only a breath away from one of the greatest personal insights in my life.

God did what I asked. He stepped into my consciousness in a way that showed me that this other person was no more guilty than I...and hadn't the Father, in his Divine love for His Son, forgiven me? Oh, what a revelation! I stepped up to the situation with a glorified awareness. I looked out across the room full of people where my heart was being challenged and silently forgave the one person present who inhibited unknowingly my ability to play piano in performance. By God's Divine intercession, I forgave that person as God had forgiven me: through and by the power of Jesus Christ.

I laid my burden down. to this day, I don't know if the other person ever knew that such a thing had gone on in me, but I know that my relationship to that person changed significantly from that moment on. Not only did I step up and play piano with an exhuberant and joyful heart, I played with a freedom uncommon to me at that time. That incident became one of the greater lessons of my life.

It also healed the relationship I had with that person. I no longer felt the burden of judgement against me. In the turn of my heart, it no longer mattered what that person thought. I was free from caring one way or the other. So I was free to love back instead and regardless of whether my love was accepted or not! A Divine circle of truth and consequence passed through my being and left its permanent track.