You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.
Long before Jesus ever quoted it, this line was already sitting inside a dense legal code about crops, property, and neighborly disputes — an odd place to find what would eventually be called one of the two greatest commandments in the whole Bible. It's easy to miss it there, buried among agricultural rules.
But look at what surrounds it: don't take vengeance, don't hold a grudge. The command to love your neighbor isn't floating in the abstract. It's specifically about what to do with the people who've actually wronged you — the ones you'd have every instinct to resent. Love here isn't warm feelings toward strangers. It's the harder work of releasing a grudge against someone real, someone close, someone who hurt you.
That's a much more demanding command than it sounds like at first. It's worth asking honestly who you're currently holding something against, and whether "as yourself" — the same grace you'd want extended to your own failures — might actually be aimed at them too.
Who are you currently holding a grudge against, and what would it take to extend them the same grace you'd want for yourself?
A short video on this is coming soon — for now, read on.