Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.

Drew Hill is a follower of Jesus. He is a friend from a church I used to serve. Recently his home was ransacked and bulglarized. I was inspired by these words he wrote on his Facebook page:

"The night we were robbed our whole family spontaneously came together to pray. We forgave the thieves and agreed in faith that Betsy's engagement ring would come back to her. Today, 14 days later, that ring is back on her finger."

Forgiveness and prayer are rooted deeply in the DNA of the Hill family. Their default reaction to a major life tragedy was to forgive and to pray, just as Jesus calls us to do.

This wasn't the case in the Sampson family. Judges 15 tells a bizarre story of hurt, revenge, and retaliation. Here is a brief summary of a strange story.

Sampson suffers the loss of the girl he has his eye on. This makes him mad, so he sets fire to the local crops. The crop owners respond by burning alive the girl and her father. Sampson is now incensed, so he ups the ante by visciously killing a number of the local population. This results in Sampson being hunted down by a huge posse, and in the end Sampson gets the final word by slaughtering 1000 men with the jawbone of a donkey.

As it turns out, revenge did not work so well for Sampson. Once the testosterone wore off, what remained were vast acres of charred land, a ruined economy, massive bloodshed, fields of dead bodies, and hundreds of widows attending funerals. Getting even turned out to be pretty messy.

And it all started with a girl and a broken heart.

Here are four truths that arise from this story:

1. Revenge is so intoxicating and so human
2. Revenge never works. It always escalates.
3. Revenge will ruin your soul
4. When revenge starts to cycle in destructive ways, someone must choose to end the cycle.

You may not be involved in Sampson's kind of arson and murder. But you might be involved in a downward cycle of "you hurt me, so I'll hurt you." This can happen in a marriage, in a family, at work, or in any arena of life.

If that's the case, you need to stop right now.

Where have you seen revenge cycling out of control? Where have you seen someone stop the insanity? I'd be interested in your stories.