Forgive Infinity Times Seven

Langston Hughes wrote, "7 x 7 + love = an amount infinitely above: 7 x 7 - love." I have to imagine he was invoking Peter's question about how often he ought to forgive, until seven times? And then the Savior's response of Seventy times seven. It is impossible to forgive without love. Love never faileth. If we try to forgive without love, our efforts will evaporate under the intense heat of our anger and sense of betrayal. But if we can love the Lord and love ourselves and love our brothers and sisters, then we have the capacity to forgive seven times seven times seven all the way to infinity. To forgive with love is to sincerely and earnestly want the one who wronged us to do better and to be better, and to do everything in our power to ensure that we and they both learn from this experience and become stronger and better and more understanding of each other. To forgive with love demands the best of us and the best of them. Through pain and sorrow comes wisdom, both to the victim who chooses to forgive and to the perpetrator who seeks forgiveness. Forgiveness binds hearts together in the mutual pursuit of trying to make the world better rather than making it worse. Without forgiveness and love we fall into a downward spiral of mutually assured destruction as vendettas are heaped upon vendettas, feuds upon feuds, blow for blow, pain for pain. But with forgiveness and love we build each other up in an upward spiral of mutually assured prosperity, trading kindness for kindness, mercy for mercy. We are all destined to offend and hurt each other far more than seven times seven, but we can choose to get sucked into a black hole of negativity and retaliation, or we can add love to the seven times seven and grow and grow together to infinity and beyond.