Let the power of love overcome the love for Power.
There is no better time to tell this story than the Easter period where we are reminded of the undying love of God for us through the sacrifice of His only begotten son. This particular story took place in a courtroom trial in South Africa:
A frail black woman about seventy years old slowly rises to her feet. Across the room and facing her are several white police officers. One of them is Mr. Van der Broek, who has just been tried and found implicated in the murders of both the woman’s son and her husband some years before. Van der Broek had come to the woman’s home, taken her son, shot him at point blank range and then set the young man’s body on fire while he and his officers partied nearby.
Several years later, Van der Broek and his men had returned for her husband as well. For months she knew nothing of his whereabouts. Then almost two years after her husband’s disappearance, Van der Broek came back to fetch the woman herself. How well she remembers in vivid detail that evening, going to a place beside a river where she was shown her husband, bound and beaten, but still strong in spirit, lying on a pile of wood. The last words she heard from his lips as the officers poured gasoline over his body and set him aflame were, “Father, forgive them…”
Now the woman stands in the courtroom and listens to the confessions offered by Mr. Van der Broek. A member of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission turns to her and asks, “So what do you want? How should justice be done to this man who has so brutally destroyed your family?”
“I want three thing,” begins the old woman calmly, but confidently. “I want first to be taken to the place where my husband’s body was burned so that I can gather up the dust and give his remains a decent burial.”
She paused, then continued. “My husband and son were my only family. I want secondly, therefore, for Mr. Van der Broek to become my son. I would like for him to come twice a month to the ghetto and spend a day with me so that I can pour out on him whatever love I still have remaining in me.” She also stated that she wanted a third thing, “This is also the wish of my husband. And so, I would kindly ask someone to come to my side and lead me across the courtroom so that I can take Mr. Van der Broek in my arms and embrace him and let him know that he is truly forgiven.” As the court assistants came to lead the elderly woman across the room, Mr. Van der Broek, overwhelmed by what he had just heard fainted. As he did, those in the courtroom, family, friends, neighbours- all victims of decades of oppression and injustice- began to sing, softly but assuredly, “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me…”
Adapted from Approval Addiction by Joyce Meyer, 2005.
Lesson: The best form of revenge is forgiveness. The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.
thank you Jesus for your Love , thank you for your Grace , its all because of you.