FORGIVENESS: Best Christmas Gift One Can Give

By Dean Nelson, Special to the Message

In the movie “27 Dresses,” Jane embarrasses her younger sister Tess in the days just before Tess’s wedding by confiding to a newspaper reporter how greedy, demanding, and out of control the bride-to-be is.

Tess explodes when the feature story appears, and it seems the sisters’ relationship is ruined forever.

But a remarkably brief time later, Tess tells Jane, “I’ve decided to forgive you.”
She then checks off a line on a piece of paper she’s holding – as if forgiving her sister was an item on her to-do list. If it were only that simple.

Everyone knows that forgiveness is not so easy that it can be put on a chore list next to “pick up dry cleaning” and “rotate tires.” It’s complicated. Messy. Guilt-inducing. Especially as the holidays approach.