text: A dark, rainy night riding down State road 4, on their way home from a wedding, sits a family of three. The mom drives as the dad is asleep in the passenger’s seat, and a baby three months old sits in the back. The road is dimly lit with scattered street lamps, they are one of few cars traveling so late at night. A sudden jolt wakes the father now, rumbling from the front left side. A tire has blown, just what they needed on a rainy ride home. The baby in the back begins to cry as the mother pulls to the roadside. With flashing hazards and an open passenger door, the car now sits lopsided as father begins to raise the front with the jack. Mother has soothed the child in minutes, and the spare is tightening down now, it seems that this hiccup won’t slow them down much longer. With the new tire on the father stands up to climb back in the car. Jason had only been a licensed driver for 8 months, every night be drove this way every day for his job, delivering pizza to any home in a 5 mile radius, but the shift was over now, it was time to head home. A buzz between his legs, his phone lights up, “New message from Kate!”, reading this he eagerly unlocked the phone. “Come over, I miss you” was what it read and Jason couldn’t believe his eyes, maybe things were beginning to look up. Still grinning at his phone, Jason has drifted toward the median in the road. Mesmerized by the text from his ex-girlfriend, he doesn’t notice the orange lights that flash through his windshield. He was going 92 in the 70MPH zone so he had no time to brake on the rainy pavement as he looked on with horror the second before colliding with the passenger side of a Honda mini-van. The impact was deafening, the open passenger door flew off the hinges and down the highway, the father’s tattered body lay sprawled a lane over, dead on impact. Mother had no time to mourn as she attempted to stop her skidding vehicle as it travels to the oncoming side. Finally losing momentum from the crash, the van tips to its side, the mother now leans on pavement and broken glass. Baby wailing in the back, mother unbuckles to attempt to escape, but a bright light and blaring horn freeze her in her tracks. 18 wheels and 40 tons collide with the already beaten mini-van and the mother is impaled with glass and steel. The baby in the back screams to an empty car, unaware that it is now an orphan. Sirens howl and red and blue light the sky, a police convoy leads the ambulance and fire truck to a gruesome scene. Jason stands shaking on the median of the road, his truck perched up on the concrete slab. He had witnessed what happened to the van he had crashed into, he was terrified and desperately dialed 911. For the arriving officer on the scene, this proved to be the most terrorizing setting of his career, the howling cries of an infant rang in his ears. The image of the mutilated body of the mother burned into his brain. He saw a terrified teenager onlooking the whole event as well. This would be the final case of his career. 22 years for vehicular manslaughter. A third life now wasted. The punishment fits the crime, says the state, but there is no way to bring life back. Nothing can come out of this but more tragedy. Jason’s mother hadn’t stopped crying since the night she’d heard of the crash. She hadn’t seen much of her son as he sat in a cell, waiting his trial. Pleading to the court, she begged for mercy on her son, there wasn’t a dry eye in the room. Still, she hugged her son now before he was to be hauled to prison, only 17 years old. The jury had decided and the judge had sentenced, 22 years he would be locked away. A decade passes and the baby now has a new home, a foster family had adopted him on his 5th birthday, now 10 years old he learns the story of his parent’s death. He had known of the car crash, but not of the manner, and not of the person responsible for the loss of his parents. Since that day, he had always wondered about the kid sent to prison for the accident. I stand before you today, and I tell you this story because it is a story I know well. I was just a baby then, but now I stand before you to say that there is no peace in anger, and there is no love like forgiveness. Our lord shown us the power of forgiveness when Jesus laid his life on the cross. Jason is here with me today as I speak to all of you, a single mistake cost the lives of two beautiful people, my mother and father. 15 years after the crash, I had petitioned for the release of Jason from prison, I would not let that mistake claim another life. Jason has worked at this church for the last ten years, he is one of my closest friends. I close today’s sermon with a final statement from Peter in Matthew 18: “Lord how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Till seven times!?” Jesus replies, “I say not unto thee seven times; but seventy times seven.