Forgiveness

On June 8, 1972, a nine-year-old Vietnamese girl, her clothes flaming due to gasoline bombs, fled the American-led assault on her village of Trang Bang. With her eyes screwed shut and her mouth spread wide in a scream of pain, she was captured on film in America’s most remembered Vietnam wartime photo. 

In Officer John Plummer’s nightmares, this picture flashed huge, in black and white, to a sound track of children screaming. His order had directed bombers to shower Kim Phuc’c village with the chemical explosives.  For years, guilt over destroying and maiming the villagers haunted the officer.  Women and alcohol were his choice of escape. 

Twenty years after the destruction of the village, officer Plummer asked Christ to take control of his life, unleashing God’s ultimate power to end guilt. Although free from guilt, he carried inside himself scars somehow linked to the thick, white scars on the neck, arm, and back of the now-grown Vietnamese girl. Six years later, Plummer knew he needed to find her.  In an effort to meet her face-to-face, he tracked her down while she was visiting America. 

Unlike the June 1972 event, no photographer captured the moment when Plummer explained to Kim Phuc who he was. But in the middle of a busy sidewalk, the soldier, now 49 years old, and the child, now 33 years old, embraced. “She just opened her arms to me,” Plummer later said. “I fell into her arms sobbing. All I could say is, I’m so sorry. I’m just so sorry.” “ It’s all right,” she replied as she patted Plummer’s back. “I forgive. I forgive.” 

Nothing you’ve ever done is too bad to ask forgiveness for. And with God, it’s never too late to ask for forgiveness. God waits patiently for you to come to Him and to ask forgiveness for your sins. Because of what Christ has done for us, God “is faithful and just to forgive us, and to cleanse us from our sins” (1 John 1:9).  That’s the only way we can have the peace that accompanies freedom from sin. 

And when God has forgiven us, we are then able to forgive others, and to seek forgiveness from those we have wronged. Jesus taught us to forgive so that we might also be forgiven (Luke 6:37). When we forgive and seek forgiveness, we allow our memories to be healed and we demonstrate the forgiveness that we have received from God.

-Edited from Still More Hot Illustrations for Youth Talks by Wayne R