While you are away on vacation, some strangers break into your house and have a wild and destructive party. They destroy your furniture, throw trash and filth around and steal all your valuables. They draw satanic symbols on your walls in blood and they tell you that they have pictures and addresses of all your relatives, whom they intend to hunt down and slaughter.

You come home to discover this disaster and alert the proper folks. Within a week the police have captured the responsible parties, the insurance company has paid funded the restoration your home to its prior condition, and your relatives are all safe. However you still have an enormous sense of violation and victimization.

You have been cured, but you have not been healed.

So you speak to professional counselors, your spiritual leaders, your family and friends. You take some time off work and you read several magazine articles and a book on the subject. Three months later you are better than new, you have a new sense of strength and have learned from this horrible experience the value of life. You reflect on the fact that worse things have happened to others and that relatively speaking, you are fortunate. It could have been much worse.

The trial date arrives and you look upon the perpetrators of this crime for the first time. You are without anger, and you find it easy to forgive the defendants, and so you do. In fact, you pity the mess they have made of their own lives through their callous disregard of your life. You are thankful for your piece of mind and realize that you wouldn't trade places with them, ever. You part ways without any feeling of malice or hatred towards them.

You have been healed and cured.

The jury comes to a verdict. The defendants are found guilty of their crimes and are sentenced appropriately. The press announces the verdict to the world, which takes note. The convicts are removed from society and taken off to prison where they serve their time.

Justice has been served.

When we speak of Reparations, the same three factor shoul