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Previous Challenge Entry
Topic: Insulted (11/01/04)
TITLE: Insulted
By Josephus van den Hoek
11/07/04
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Sticks and stones may break my bones but words really do hurt me. Oh yes, words can cause inner wounds. Words can scar us on the inside, for life. Insults may wound us so deeply that we spend a lifetime hiding, licking or denying them.

I doubt any of us can deny having ever been insulted. If we are honest with ourselves we will all remember something in our childhood which has hurt us. A school teacher may have called us stupid. "Mommy, he said I ……”. Parents may have said something out of frustration or even worse, intentionally, which has shaken us to the core. If we are honest with ourselves we may even remember a childhood heartthrob who rejected us in some way. The point is we all understand the pain.

If we take our Christian father Jesus as a model then we can see that He understands our pain. He was abandoned by His closest friends, (Peter). He was betrayed with a kiss from within His own ranks, (Judas). He was also put to death by us as the human race. We were the very ones He was trying to save. What an insult!

Yet He asks His father to forgive us. What a response! If we consider His earlier words about forgiveness;“seventy times seven”, then we can begin to comprehend how deeply we insulted Him and how graciously He forgives us.

The next time I am insulted I would do well to remember that my best response to being insulted is to forgive.