PAUL AND KELLY BENITEZ
In 1967, Paul Benitez and his fiancée Debra were married. In 1968, they had a baby boy and named him Kelly. Paul was drafted into the Army in 1969. While he was overseas, Debra moved away and changed her name. Paul was never able to find his wife nor his baby boy. He would eventually move to Los Angeles and become a school teacher.
On September 18th 1998, LAPD officer Kelly Benitez pulled over a blue, Ford Thunderbird for an expired registration sticker. The twenty-nine-year-old policeman felt kind of strange when he noticed the last name on this gentleman’s driver’s license was the same as his own. He took a shot in the dark and asked several probing questions.
The forty-nine-year-old schoolteacher saw the officer’s name tag and suddenly blurted out, "Are you Kelly?" He then yelled, "I’m your Dad!" The two men found out that they had lived just five miles from each other for years!
Sin does the same thing spiritually that Debra did physically. It separates and estranges us from God the Father!
(From a sermon by Tim Huie, "Christ the Reconciler" 1/13/2009)