This is an absolute ‘must read’ for every pastoral care team member, counsellor, minister, church worker – in fact every person Christian or otherwise who is involved in life as we know it.  Wendy Alsup weaves a theology of forgiveness around the story of Joseph and his brothers, to whom he learns to extend the hand of forgiveness in a remarkable way. Throughout Joseph’s story we find that he weeps four times and each time he does so he exposes another area of vulnerability that resonates with each one of us. As we are led through each room of heightened emotions which always accompany the possibility of forgiveness, so we are brought to the foot of the cross.  This is where forgiveness meets us personally. \ \ While the author writes as a Christian there is the deepest and richest concept of forgiveness that lies at the heart of every human being who wants to transform a relationship that has gone wrong.  We all want reconciliation when the gulf between seems too wide to cross. Yet in the most sensitive way Alsup gently tells us that it is possible when we allow God to change our hearts in a deep and lasting way.

Ruth Aird, Bruntsfield Evangelical Church, Edinburgh