Benevolence

The power of forgiveness is as difficult and challenging to practice especially when caught off guard. Take for instance the store owner who showed mercy. In these desperate times desperate measures are sought by a few which by no means should ever be condoned.

This scene caught on a security camera played out on the ‘Today’ show, broadcasted on NBC while I heartily gobbled my breakfast.

But here it is. A father stealing to support his starving family, in the gloom of the darkness and shrouded in a mask and armed with a bat barges into a convenience store. The store owner having none of it retaliates with a shotgun from behind the counter only to be faced with sobbing man. A hazy close up shot depicts the joining of hands begging to have his life spared in a prayer like gesture. Extremely haunting.

Literally holding the would be-robber’s life in his hands, the benefactor instead handed him forty dollars along with a loaf of bread and made him promise never to commit it ever again. This act of kindness moved me so much showing that here in this world in a time of so much tumultuous troubling times the best of humanity is still prevails.

This immediately resonated with Victor Hugo’s tale of redemption in his epic novel ‘Les Misérables’. The central character Jean Valjean was so grateful and repentive when his benefactor, Bishop Myriel, bestows even more kindness when Valjean wrongs him. Not only is he released from these charges but is given two silver candlesticks. This changes him forever and repays this act of forgiveness and kindness forward later in life and thus is redeemed.

I do hope that I shall make this an example should a similar situation ever arise in my life that will make a difference to another human being’s destiny. Just like that of Mohammad Sohail from the Shirley Express convenience store showed us on that fateful night in Garden City, New York.

As I finish my thoughts on the subject of forgiveness, let us not ever forget the young men who laid their lives on the shores during the Invasion of Normandy that commenced on June 6, 1944.


And now we pay our respects to these brave men and women courtesy of “This week with George Stephanopoulos” aired during week of May 31, 2009
Army MAJ Jason E George, 38, of Tehachapi, CA
Army 1LT Leevi K Barnard, 28, of Mount Airy, NC
Army SGT Paul F Brooks, 34, of Reedsville, WV
Army CWO Brent S Cole, 38, of Reedsville, WV
Army SFC Brian Naseman, 36, of New Bremen, OH
Air Force Lt Col Mark E Stratton II, 39, of Houston
Air Force SrA Ashton L M Goodman, 21, of Indianapolis
Navy CDR Duane G Wolfe, 54, of Port Hueneme, CA
Army 1SG Blue C Rowe, 33, of Summers, AR
Army SPC Chad A Edmundson, 20, of Williamsburg, PA



May happiness reign for all of us who live life and live it to the fullest and never forget those who have moved to the spiritual plane. How beautiful this world is and how much we must treasure it.