Perhaps you have heard about the father who introduced his children:

"This is Pete. He's the clumsy one of the lot."

"That's Kathy coming in with mud on her shoes. She's the sloppy one."

"As always, Mike's last. He'll be late for his own funeral, I promise you."

That dad did a thorough job of labeling his children with their faults and mistakes. People do it to us and to those we love all the time. They remind us of our failures, our errors, our sins, and they won't let us live them down. Try as you may to free yourself from the past, there are people who will continue to remind you of it. But I say to you this day, you have a chance to begin again.

When we don't let people forget their past, when we don't forgive, we label people with those mistakes. We refuse to see them as more than the sum total of their errors. On the other hand, when we forgive, we gently pry the doer of the hurtful deed away from the deed itself, and we say that the past is just that--past--over and done with.