“Be kind to one another, forgiving one another.” —Ephesians 6:32

There’s a story about two friends who were walking through the desert. During the journey they had an argument. One of the friends lost his cool and, on impulse, slapped the other one in the face. The one who got slapped was dismayed, but without saying anything, stooped down and wrote in the sand: “TODAY MY BEST FRIEND SLAPPED ME IN THE FACE.”

They both regained their composure and kept on walking until they found a deep and wide oasis where they decided to take a bath. The one, who had been slapped, waded into the deep of the oasis but, since he couldn’t swim, he started to drown. The other friend, on a higher impulse this time, rushed to the rescue of his drowning friend and managed to save his life. After the friend, who nearly drowned, recovered from the awful ordeal, he wrote on a stone: “TODAY MY BEST FRIEND SAVED MY LIFE.”

The friend who had slapped and saved the life of his best friend was befuddled and exclaimed: “After I hurt you, you wrote in the sand. Now, you write on a stone. Why?”

The other friend replied: “When someone hurts us, we should write it down in sand where the winds of forgiveness can blow it away. But, when someone does something good for us, like you did by saving my life, we must engrave it in stone where nothing can ever erase it.”

Forgiveness and gratitude go hand in hand. They are both affirmations of goodness. You will never know how to be grateful if you don’t know how to forgive. People hurt each other whether they intend to or not. It is part of what we do as human beings. Forgiveness removes the hurt while gratitude acknowledges the good.

The beauty is that we have the ability to forgive the hurt, and be grateful for the good. The important thing in life is to let go of the hurt like dust in the wind, and cherish the good like it is written in stone.