A man whose son was injured grievously at the hands of another, went to his brother and said, "Help me to get revenge upon this man." His brother tried to dissuade him saying, "It is better to leave vengeance to God." Angrily, he refused and said, "I shall not rest until I exact revenge upon this man! Will you help me or not?" His brother replied, "Of course, but let us pray first." They bowed their heads and the brother began praying:
"God, we no longer need you to take care of us since we now avenge ourselves."
Unable to say 'amen' the first man thanked him for his help and went away to work on forgiveness instead.
Good lesson, ... ... ... All I can think of at this moment is what AA has taught me regarding revenge ... I learned that taking revenge against a person is like holding a 'red hot coal' in your hand to throw at the person who wronged you, you're the one getting burned ... ... ... anger destroys from within ...
Pappy
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'Those who leave everything in God's hand will eventually see God's hand in everything.'
I especially thought that you would like this story Pappy. It is an interpretation from a story that came from a group of Christian monks living in Egypt during the 4th and 5th centuries.
You guys want to hear about the movie I watched last night?????
Hold on.....the title was "Revenge"....it was made sometime in 1990 and has Kevin Costner and Anthony Quinn. It got a 5 Star rating, though not by me. It was in some ways one of the worst movies I had ever seen (excessive violence, too many coincidences which made it unrealistic to me, etc.) and it was one of the best movies I have ever seen (romance, intriguing, and well...Kostner, of course).
At first I thought after reading the brief summary of it before I watched it I thought Quinn was po'd that his best friend fell in love with his wife and gets "revenge", thus the title. And boy, did he and I had to leave the room more than once when he did! Then when Costner's face and body which had gotten beaten to a pulp had a miraculous healing by a couple of scenes later, I thought oh, he's going to get revenge on Quinn and his mafia-style buddies, and try to get Quinn's wife "back" so they could be together. Which he did get "back" and killed the "bad guys" except for Quinn, who ended up telling Kostner where his wife was to spare his own life. So Costner found her. Unfortunately, she had been beaten up to, and died in Costner's arms.
I thought after I watched it, what a horrible movie it was and what a waste of my time in watching something which I thought would have if not the happiest ending, a happier one than that. I didn't want to be depressed from it.....I dabbed my eyes and went to bed but only after having to watch The Golden Girls to get my mind off of it.
Anyway, this morning I was thinking about that "horrible" movie and realized that maybe the writer wasn't the biggest "bad guy" about this movie after all. Both men sought revenge after the other one and I guess you could say both got it. Neither man "won" though, because the girl ended up dying and neither one got her, which was the motivation for their revenge. I think the writer was trying to say that it doesn't pay to seek revenge.
I still don't give it a 5 Stars, though. Costner's dog in the movie got killed and I won't give anything a 5 Stars when they use animals as victims in movies....(my favorite star was Lassie growing up).
In the first season, episode four of the series 'Kung Fu' there was a show called "An Eye for and Eye". The last exchange in the movie, after a series of revenge motivated killings, an old man yelled after Caine, "If I don't have a right to revenge, who does?"
