One day a woman was driving with her children northbound to the nearest
town to get some shopping done. It was a
beautiful spring day and it was around two in the afternoon. Well, it just so happens that a man was
driving southbound on the same highway and unfortunately he had had too much to
drink. As one would assume, there was a
terrible accident.
The ambulance was called after the deputy arrived on the scene. The woman and her children all needed to be
taken to the nearest hospital. The
intoxicated man just had a few bruises on him and was questioned and released.
A few days later, the young deputy came to the hospital and sought out the
woman to ask her a few questions. As she
lay there with one leg in a cast after surgery to put pins in which might leave
her with a permanent limp, the pain of his questions were far worse than
anything she was experiencing with that leg.
"Ma'am, why were you driving that day? Shouldn't you have exercised more care in
observing what was going on around you?
Do you not know that these types of things can happen and you should
have exercised more caution? How do you
think this would have turned out if you would have had a better reaction
time?" and on the questions went.
No matter the shock the woman was still in from the accident itself, the
questions put her in a deeper shock as she had no idea how to answer them. Was she indeed at fault here? Could she have done something different to
have avoided this accident? And look at
how her children have been affected? The
bruises will disappear, but the scars of trauma will remain for the rest of
their lives? Is this also her fault?
To extend matters further, the man who had been driving drunk came and also
questioned her. "Why were you out
on the road that day? Why couldn't you
have been driving at another time? Don't
you know that I need the whole highway when I am driving after I have been
drinking? I don't drink all the time,
but when I do after a stressful day, I don't need careless drivers on the
road."
The deputy came in a few days later as the woman was trying to learn how to
walk again with a cast and with the pins in her leg. "Do you want to press charges?", he
asked. "You know this guy has been
through a lot in life and I am sure he never intended to harm you in this
way. He knows he has a problem and, in
fact, he has had other accidents involving others both while in his car and
with other cars. I have had to talk to
them, too, and explain that this guy really means well. He just has a problem but he doesn't really
plan to hurt anyone. He tells me that he
even reads the police report each week so that he can look at himself and pat
himself on the back that at least he isn't doing worse things. Can you give him a break?"
If the woman were told that she was living an episode of the Twilight Zone,
she would have believed it. What a
craziness! Here she was having a
wonderful day with her children and, yes, things hadn't been easy lately, but
now she was faced with a permanent limp, possibly having to leave her job, seek
out counseling for her and her children for the trauma of the accident after their
physical wounds heal and she was to let this man go free to most likely injure
others that come into the path of his life?
"No! This is wrong and he
should face the consequences of what has happened so that no one else will get
hurt, we can heal and this man will be forced to get help whether he sees that
he needs help or not!"
As Nathan came before King David and told him a story and King David was
enraged by it, the prophet says, "You are that man"!
