It’s Never Too Late

Forgive, some may say, forgive and forget

Let 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