Daylan McLee sat in his apartment when he heard the “boom” and felt his building shake.
Then, a relative ran into the room in the apartment in Uniontown, Pennsylvania. A terrible crash had happened on the street below involving a police cruiser.
McLee dashed outside and pulled a policeman from the mangled car engulfed in flames.
What made this an unusual story was McLee’s past. He had sued the Pennsylvania state police for false arrest. He spent a year in jail before his case was dismissed for lack of evidence.
It was a year he wished he had not lost. The year claimed time with children and stopped him from helping his mother, who was ill.
For him, it was not a hard decision to pull the policeman from the car. “No matter what other people have done to me, this guy deserves to make it home safely to his family.”
McLee, who is African-American, knew what he needed and what the world needs.
We need to work on our humanity … that’s the main problem of this world. We’re stuck on how to get up or to get even, and that is not how I was raised to be. You learn, you live, you move on, and I was always taught to forgive big. You can’t base every day of your life on one interaction you have with one individual. I don’t want to be called a hero. I just want to be known as an individual who is an upstanding man. And I hope (that trooper) sees this and knows he’s forgiven.
In a world upside down with problems, the remedy is the hardest to do. Let things go. That is forgiveness. It is the bridge over which we also must pass.
Jesus encased forgiveness in the model prayer:
“…forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” (Matthew 6:12)
If we cannot forgive others, God cannot forgive us.
Learn to forgive. It makes life for you and others so much better.
-Robert G. Taylor-
