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Key Bible Verse: What is twisted cannot be straightened; what is lacking cannot be counted (Ecclesiastes 1:15). Bonus Reading: Ecclesiastes 1:1-2:11

After the Civil War, in an incident recounted by Charles Flood in Lee: The Last Years, Robert E. Lee visited a woman who took him to the remains of a grand old tree in front of her home. There she cried bitterly that its limbs and trunk had been destroyed by Union artillery fire. She waited for Lee to condemn the North or at least sympathize with her loss. But Lee—who knew the horrors of war and had suffered the pain of defeat—said, "Cut it down, my dear madam, and then forget it."

In the late 1990s, Pete Peterson was appointed U.S. ambassador to Vietnam. Peterson had served six years as a prisoner of war in the dreaded "Hanoi Hilton" prison camp. When asked how he could return to the land where he'd endured years of starvation, brutality and torture, he replied, "I'm not angry. I left that at the gates of the prison when I walked out in 1972. I just left it behind me and decided to move forward with my life."

When you're tempted to get even with those who hurt you, remember that you can't go back, you can't stay where you are but, by God's grace, you can move forward one step at a time.

—Ray Pritchard in Something New Under the Sun

Credits: Adapted from — Sunday: Something New Under the Sun (Moody Bible Institute, 1998)

Copyright © 2000 by the author or Christianity Today International/Men of Integrity. For reprint information click here.

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Prayer for the Week

Jesus, fill me with the abundant life promised in Your Word. Give me Your wisdom to live well.

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