James E Faust, an apostle of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, gave his last General Conference address in April 2007 before passing away. The talk is called The Healing Power of Forgiveness. It’s message is so important! Please find a moment during this day to watch and listen with your heart.
A Good Life 
A very heavy subject, yet an utterly important and also interesting one.
The Amish people undoubtedly showed a very gracious ability to forgive, acting like true Christians. I think for most people, under such serious circumstances; an approach like that wouldn’t come naturally.
But a thought that comes to mind is this; wherever there is a need for forgiveness, there will also be pain involved. And we are only humans; pain hurts. Sometimes it hurts badly. And we can not expect sincere feelings of forgiveness to just appear out of the blue. Even in less serious situations than this one – I think that is not likely to happen.
So I believe in starting out by acknowledging that pain, allowing ourselves to feel it: someone actually wronged me. I was in fact hurt, perhaps with no wrongdoing on my part at all. But then, and here’s the important part; instead of holding on to this feeling and allowing it to harden our hearts, leaving us prone to bitterness or even feeling revengeful, we can make a conscious choice to put it behind us, to let it go. To forgive.
Personally I try to have this approach towards fear. If I picture myself standing on a bridge ready to do a bungee jump, I wouldn’t tell myself “I’m not afraid”. Because my subconsciousness would know that wouldn’t be true. Instead I would say “OK, this scares me to death, – but I will do it anyway. Because I make a conscious choice to overcome my fear and turn that energy into courage” (Not that I have found the courage to do a bungee jump – at least not yet… it was just an example)
Additionally, forgiveness cannot be dependent on the offender’s confession or apology. In the case of the Amish school where he ends up taking his own life as well, that moment will never come. And so the girls’ families would be sentenced to suffer (even more) for a lifetime.
As for healing (a wonderful word by the way) it is a fact that none of us are perfect. Knowing that, the hardest part can sometimes be to be able to forgive ourselves, and thus to be able to receive forgiveness, whether divine or human. But if we know within our hearts that we have truly put our best effort into forgiving those who did us wrong, then perhaps it’s easier to also feel that we are ourselves worthy of forgiveness.
oh boy…
This is so touchy.
How this man speeks, eventhough he has difficulties breathing…
This must have been such a wise man!
I remember hearing this in the news about the shooting in the Amish school…But I didn’t know they were so kind to the family of that “milkman”.
If I’m honest…I don’t know if I would be so forgivable. I know, after this speech…I should be.
It’s a sign of wisdom if you can do that. And I’m jealous of persons who can!
There is one last thing I want to say about this :
RESPECT!