There is a great contrast between a sponge and a spring.  A sponge swells up several times its normal size to hold on to all it can absorb.  The only way to get something from a sponge is to squeeze it out.  The spring, on the other hand, is always giving.  It does not hold anything back.  The sponge is a corpse, while the spring is alive.  It is a clear teaching of the Bible that we are springs, not sponges. Jesus said, "It is more blessed to give than receive." Acts 20:35.
               
One of the things we are to give is forgiveness.  Forgiveness does not come naturally.  The urge to retaliate, to hit back, does come easily but revenge is a double edge sword that cuts the one welding it.  Francis Bacon warned, "The man that studieth revenge keepeth his own wound green."

Forgiveness means forgetting.  Paul implies us to "Let all bitterness, wrath, and anger be put away from you; forgiving one another as Christ forgave you."

Forgiveness is different from onion skinned niceness that smiles and says "hello" on the outside while burning up with anger on the inside.
Before refrigeration, people used icehouses to preserve their food.  In winter, when streams and lakes were frozen, large blocks of ice were cut, hauled to the icehouse and covered with sawdust.   One man lost a valuable watch while working in an icehouse.  He searched diligently for it, carefully raking through the sawdust, but didn't find it.  A small boy who heard about the fruitless search slipped into the icehouse during the noon hour and soon emerged with the watches.  The man asked, "How did you do it?"  The boy replied, "I closed the door."  I lay down in the sawdust and kept very still.  Soon I heard the ticking of the watch."

                                                                                        
Dewey Davidson