Humility and Grace
The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. It is hard to imagine a more poignant illustration of this reality articulated in Psalm 51:17 than the story of how a Eric Lomax, a British prisoner during World War II at River Kwai, Thailand, decades years later forgave the Japanese interpreter who tortured him horribly during his captivity. During the 1980s after he retired, Lomax scoured news sources looking for information about Nagase Takashi. After Lomax read that Takashi was consumed by guilt over the torture of a British soldier, he initiated a meeting and the two were reconciled. “When we met, Nagase greeted me with a formal bow,” Mr. Lomax is quoted as saying on the web site of the Forgiveness Project . “I took his hand and said in Japanese, ‘Good morning, Mr. Nagase, how are you?’ He was trembling and crying, and he said over and over again: ‘I am so sorry, so very sorry.’ I had come w