IT'S ALL around us - the sad evidence that revenge is not the solution to hatred and violence. It doesn't work any better globally than it does in the home or the playground.

Yet the cycle continues. Like the sorcerer's apprentice, we find it has a life of its own. Once we call it into action we can't stop it again.

God breaks the deadly cycle through forgiveness. Whenever a human being is willing to forgive, God blesses their act of forgiveness with His supernatural power. And Jesus demonstrated that we can - and must - claim forgiveness as a constant state of heart, not just as a one-off.

Impossible? Over three hundred years ago, the poet Alexander Pope wrote "to err is human, to forgive, divine." Or, as we might word it now: "it helps to have God when you're trying to forgive."

Read these two stories:

More power than a twelve-inch knife
A better way