THE man kneeling in the picture owed the king hundreds and hundreds of dollars. He had no money to pay the king. The king said that this man and his wife and children must be sold and the money used to pay the debt. The man begged the king to wait a while, promising that by and by he would give him the money. The king then felt sorry for the poor man and said the man would not need to pay him any money. The man arose and walked away.

Soon he met a friend who owed him a little money. He spoke harshly to the friend and told him to pay the money. The friend did not have any money. He kneeled down before the man and said, “Wait a while, and by and by I will give you the money.” But the man seemed to have forgotten that the king had been kind to him. He had the friend put in jail. When the king heard about this, he did not like it, and he punished the hard-hearted man.

We are like the man in the picture. We ask God to be good to us and forgive us when we do wrong. Then, maybe, we are not good to our little friends when they do wrong to us. If they do a bad thing to us, we want to pay them back. We should not do this way. Jesus said that if we would not forgive others, God would not forgive us. To forgive our friends means to be just as good to them when they do wrong to us as when they do good to us.