A Kayak Apology

On my kayak fishing forum, I witnessed something I wish I would see more often: an apology. Someone posted a fairly sharp unfounded accusation about a particular man stealing his fishing spots. This triggered a fairly honest and direct response from the accused party. After a series of forum posts siding with the accused, the harsh accuser actually admitted to the accused that he was wrong! An actual apology! Now of course preceding the apology was the standard, "It takes a big man to admit he's wrong (there's always pride mixed in with humility)," but it was an actual apology. Then posts soon followed showing great appreciation for his apology. Two things worth noticing here: 1) apologies are seldom uttered in the church, as far as I've experienced. I wonder if unbelievers apologize more than we do 2.) the response to an apology is more often well received than ill-received. We ought not to be afraid of sinning against others. If we're going to be in relationships and community, we will sin (not excusing it, but it is a reality). Being afraid to apologize is really the bigger problem. We Christians ought to do a lot more apologizing than we currently do. We'd probably be suprised at how many more people will listen to us. And maybe they'll like us more.