Earlier this year,
thousands of people assembled for the funeral of a New York hero—NYPD Detective
Steven McDonald. McDonald was on patrol on July 12, 1986, when he spotted a bicycle thief and two other teenagers in Central Park. When he moved to frisk
one of them, 15-year-old Shavod Jones shot McDonald three times, with one
bullet piercing the officer’s spinal column and leaving him paralyzed from the
neck down.
As Steven began to realize
the full extent of his injuries, he was overwhelmed with despair and anger.
McDonald had a turning point when he turned to Christ and prayed the famous
prayer of Francis of Assisi: “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where
there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon….” Gradually, his
attitude changed, and Steven became an advocate for forgiveness. About six
months after the accident, McDonald made a statement about Jones through
his wife that defined the rest of his life: “I forgive him and hope he can find
peace and purpose in his life.”
In the years following the
shooting, McDonald’s message of forgiveness opened the door for him to travel
around the world. He met with Pope John Paul II and Nelson Mandela, and sat for
an interview with Barbara Walters. He also took his message of forgiveness to
Israel, Northern Ireland and Bosnia.
When McDonald passed away
at age 59, his family encircled him and prayed the Lord’s Prayer focusing
especially on this part: forgive us our
trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. (Matt. 6:12)[i]
There is nothing closer to
Christ-likeness than when we release an offender from an offense. Simply put,
forgiven people are forgiving people. If you can’t learn to forgive then you
don’t understand the Gospel. As C.S. Lewis has written, “To be a Christian
means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in
you.”[ii]
We can’t survive life’s
traumas if we don’t learn to forgive others. When we forgive someone, we are
not excusing or condoning their actions. We are choosing to release the
bitterness that can poison our own personalities. We are letting a ray of
compassion break through the clouds so we can forgive as God has forgiven us.
Lewis Smedes wrote, “To
forgive is to put down your 50-pound pack after a 10 mile climb up a mountain.
To forgive is fall into a chair after a marathon. To forgive is to reach back
into your hurting past and recreate it in your memory so that you can begin
again. It is to ride the crest of love’s highest wave. To forgive is set a
prisoner free and discover the prisoner was you.”[iii]
[i] “Steven
McDonald, Paralyzed Police Officer Who Forgave Shooter, Remembered as 'Superman,'”
USA Today, 13 January 2017 <https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2017/01/13/paralyzed-detective-who-forgave-shooter-eulogized-as-hero/96547244/>
[ii]
Jerry Root and Wayne Martindale, The
Quotable C.S. Lewis, (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale, 2012), 221.
[iii]
Lewis B. Smedes, “Forgiveness, The Power to Change the Past,” Christianity Today, January 7, 1983, p.
26.
Hello and peace to you Derrick, my name is Peg Demetris, and I used your image at the top of this blog post. Forgive me, I had not asked you first. I will take it down if you would like, but I am asking you now, if you would mind if I used it, and gave you the kudos for the image on my post. I find it amazing that you have used it here on this post, as I am a rape survivor, who has forgiven my attacker. What I am interested in using this for, is a post called, To Forgive Is To Love. I am linking the image to you post on my blog. Peace of our Lord to you. Peg Demetris
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