I would like to give credit for this blog post to Justin Zoradi, who originally wrote this story back in May of this year. I found it to be especially appropriate for the Christmas season. When there are so many fractured families that wont be celebrating Christmas together because of unresolved bitterness or anger towards one another. This story is an example of how because of the way that God forgives us of far greater things that we do or have done in the past, We have no place to hold unforgiveness toward each other. Are we greater than God that we don’t have to forgive one another?
This is what forgiveness looks like
On May 20, 2012, 18 year-old Takunda Mavima was driving home drunk from a party when he lost control and crashed his car into another car on an off-ramp near Grand Rapids, Michigan. Riding in the car were 17 year-old, Tim See, and 15 year-old, Krysta Howell. Both were killed in the accident. Takunda Mavima lived.
Mavima pleaded guilty to all charges and was sentenced to between 30 months and 15 years in prison.
Despite their unimaginable grief and anger, both the sister and the father of victim, Tim See, gave a moving address to the court on behalf of Mavima, urging the judge to give him a light sentence.
“I am begging you to let Takunda Mavima make something of himself in the real world — don’t send him to prison and get hard and bitter, that boy has learned his lesson a thousand times over and he’ll never make the same mistake again.”
And when the hearing ended, the victim’s family made their way across the courtroom to embrace, console, and publicly forgive Mavima. This family had every right to be upset of harbor bitterness against Mavima. Because of his poor judgement in driving that night, he took the lives of 3 innocent young people. That was tragedy enough for that family. But they knew that what would have continued that tragedy and not allowed them to heal past it, would have been to not forgive the person that committed the act.
There will be a time in your life when someone will wrong you. God forbid they take the life of your child. But it will happen. And what matters most isn’t how it happened, but how you respond to it.
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