The Vulnerability of Forgiveness



I’ve been thinking about the 1998 movie You’ve Got Mail

At first glance, you’d think this movie is about winning. Joe Fox is Goliath, trampling down the weaker competition as we cheer for the David-style entrepreneur who dares to come against him. Although the female version of the David character does achieve a win in an unexpected way in the end, it’s not a David and Goliath fight at all. Joe Fox isn’t Goliath. 

Fox shows that he knows how to separate his business from his personal life until he realizes that his business has interfered with his personal life. When he begins to put a plan into action that would give him an enjoyable life away from the competitive tensions of work, he has to tread carefully through the transitions. 

Going from enemy to likeable acquaintance to friend is a hard journey. It takes vulnerability for that kind of a journey to have any lasting value. Fox has to make a fresh start and rethink his goal. If he wants a life he’s never had, he has to do something he’s never done. 

His humility was what gave Fox the opportunity to go from the man who has everything to the man who must get the one thing he wants most: forgiveness.

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