It’s Never Too Late
Forgive, some may say, forgive and forgetLet go of resentment you’ve no right to it.
Release all the pain and the raw incident
Will enter the past—which no longer exists.
There’s only today, as some people say,
The past has expired and the future just may
Never arrive, there is no guarantee
That the sun will tomorrow come out of its sleeve.
But I tell you my friend that a life is composed
of the challenges past and the future unknown,
That lives in our dreams and our fears and pretense
As we sort through the years and try to make sense
Of the challenges, triumphs, sorrows and toil
In the years that we’ve traveled this earth’s golden soil,
Of the harvests that grew from the seeds that were sown
Before we discerned them or made them our own.
Forgive and remember is a far better path
To wring the pain out of the hurts of our past.
To envision the Arms that carried us through
And believe in the Heart that made everything new.
We can’t soar the heights while still chained to the past
But the links won’t be broken by pretense—our task
Is to plumb to the depths the extent of our pain,
And soar on the wings that are broken—again.
Soar with a strength born of adversity
Ever nearer the heart of our Father and King
Who wrote it all down in His grand Record Book
His sufferings and trials and the path that He took,
To the place of the skull where He hung on a tree
and offered his blood—an eternal reprieve
To those who reviled him and spit in His face
For He knew it was theirs—and not His—the disgrace.
He didn’t conceal it—not one little thing
But he told it and wrote it and remembers its sting.
And that, my dear friends, is the essence of love
To measure it truly and still rise above
The right to revenge and surrender our hate
To the Author of Love—for it’s never too late.
© linda settles