Sermon Central
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Amazing Forgiveness
Contributed by Sermon Central on Dec 31, 2022 (message contributor)
A policeman recounted an incident when he and other officers shot an eighteen-year-old boy and burned the body. Eight years later the policeman returned to the same house and seized the boy's father. The wife was forced to watch as policemen bound her husband on a woodpile, poured gasoline over his body, and ignited it.
The courtroom grew hushed as the elderly woman who had lost first her son and then her husband was given a chance to respond. "What do you want from this policeman?" the judge asked. She said she wanted him to go to the place where they burned her husband's body and gather up the dust so she could give him a decent burial. His head down, the policeman nodded in agreement.
Then she added a further request, "He took all my family away from me, and I still have a lot of love to give. Twice a month, I would like for him to come to the ghetto and spend a day with me so I can be a mother to him. And I would like this man to know that he is forgiven by God and that I forgive him too. I would like to embrace him so he can know my forgiveness is real."
Some in the courtroom began singing "Amazing Grace" as the elderly woman made her way to the witness stand, but the man did not hear the hymn. He had fainted, overwhelmed.
(Taken from an illustration by Bret Toman, entitled "Amazing Forgiveness", on 11/26/2011, https://www.sermoncentral.com/sermon-illustrations/80418/forgiveness-for-others-by-bret-toman)
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