The famous French novelist, Francois Mauriac, wrote a book entitled Knot of Vipers, in which an old man spent the last thirty years of his life sleeping down the hall from his wife after an argument over their five-year-old daughter. Neither of them was willing to forgive, and in the years that followed, neither of them was willing to take the first step back. Now, every night he waits for her to approach him, but she never appears; while she lies awake waiting for him to approach her, and he never appears.
It is a story of how we become the primary victims of our own unforgiveness and remain bound to the people we cannot forgive. Jesus said that if we refuse to forgive, we’ll never be forgiven. The only thing harder than forgiveness is the alternative.