What is forgiveness?  Although thousands of books have written about forgiveness, what forgiveness really boils down to is this:  letting go of what one wants for what one believes.  Perhaps you remember an incident that occurred in the Amish community of western Pennsylvania in 2006.  As a number of Amish children were studying in their one room school house, a heavily armed gunman burst into the room and opened fire.  In a matter of seconds, five children were dead.  The gunman later took his own life.
     What did the Amish do?  As one of their people explained, “I don’t think there’s anybody here that wants to do anything but forgive and not only reach out to those who have suffered a loss in that way but to reach out to the family of the man who committed these acts.”  Many Amish visited the gunman's parents, spending hours trying to comfort them.  Thirty attended his funeral.  Not one spoke of malice or vengeance.  Their forgiveness was total.
     I doubt anyone would deny that he or she would have trouble emulating the Amish.  For accompanying forgiveness are other issues, important issues of forgetting, vengeance, and justice, to name a few.  But ours is not to worry about such things as much as it is to forgive.  Forgiveness is for us, and not necessarily for the one being forgiven.  It is what we are to do.  Forgiveness enables the sentiments of the Hebrew phrase, Tikkun Olam, "the healing of the world."  It changes us, it changes the planet.
     Moreoever, if justice is real, it will eventually be effected.  As one Amish father told his son several days after the shooting, "We must remember that this man had a mother and a father, and a soul, and now he stands before a just God."