Obligated to Love More and Forgive

We are obliged to be reconciled to [our] brother even when he is wrong and we are only the victim of the grievance. For purposes of the commandment of reconciliation, fault is unimportant. The object is reconciliation; peace not justice. Reconciliation seeks the restoration of relationships, not the adjudication of differences. --Dallin H. Oaks

For those of you who are not LDS in faith, let me give you a little background on this post. Yesterday as I sat through church I had all kinds of mixed emotions. You see the subject was on forgiveness, which as you can tell by the 90 something posts that I have been jabbering in, is quite the sensitive subject to me. 

At first, I sat in the meeting wondering why if there are so many great examples of forgiveness in our church and in the Bible and in the gospel as a whole, why can't my pbff forgive me. Why am I still angry with her? Why did I make the mistakes I made and why am I still pleading and begging for her and her family to forgive me through a seemingly obsessive forgiveness blog? Because let's be real people...this blog of mine is a little over the top! Then two stories were told that helped me see that it doesn't matter.

The stories were about who our faith reveres as a Prophet of God, who came to earth and restored the beautiful Gospel of Jesus Christ, Joseph Smith. 

The first was a story of Ezra Booth, who became a missionary after seeing a miracle of the healing of Elsa Johnson's arm. While on a mission for the church he became disappointed that he was no longer witnessing miracles on the same level and his behavior was not indicative of what a latter day saint should be. So he was excommunicated from the church. Long story short, Ezra started writing letters and trying to destroy Joseph and the church which led to Joseph being tarred and feathered. The way they did this was they choked him, tore off his clothes, tried to push a paddle of hot tar and acid in his mouth, scratched him, and poured the tar and feathers onto his body.

The next day Joseph went at the usual time to worship with the Saints and as he delivered his sermon, and let it be mentioned, some of the mob from the previous night were there, he never mentioned the violence of the night before. He just loved those brethren and wanted to serve them and his Lord. Now maybe we have not all been scraped, tarred and feathered, and burned with acid, but we have all maybe been hurt, humiliated, embarrassed, used, crapped on (for lack of better term), abandoned, spent, and destroyed, either by the intentional or unintentional doing of another.

In looking at the quote above, I can't help but think of how I need to handle things with my pbff. It doesn't matter who was at fault or who hurt whom. What matters is I am under the same obligation and commandment as we all are to forgive and love more. With so many great people around and wonderful examples, I can't help but try and emulate the Savior's example and the many others.