Don't we all want another chance?

I came across this piece at ESPN and it points out the importance of second chances and forgiveness. I think some will read this and not agree with giving Casey Therriault another chance. But some of you will understand the point.

What is interesting is who gave him the second chance.

I feel sorry for those of you who can’t forgive because your life won’t be as great or as enjoyable as it could be. You will always be uncomfortable especially when you are in the presence of the person you can’t forgive. And trust me that will occur.

When you don’t or won’t, which is more like it, forgive you are enslaved to the unforgiveness. You become a different person and show others a side of you that they won’t like. They will also think that someday you may hold them in the same type of contempt.

I am convinced that the only reason I can forgive is because of Jesus and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. When you realize that God forgives us for all the crap we have done in our lives we can begin to see the importance of forgiving others.

Read the entire piece to get the whole picture. I have only excerpted a short portion of it.

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/columns/story?columnist=forde_pat&id=6021619


"I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice."
-- Martin Luther King Jr., Aug. 28, 1963

JACKSON, Miss. -- Scenes from an oasis:

A fence separated the old black woman from the football field, but it didn't stop her. She wanted to meet the young white quarterback. She asked the coach to bring him over. If you don't have a place to go for Thanksgiving, the old woman told the quarterback through the fence, we will feed you.

In the stands in Memphis, Tenn., weeks earlier, a black stranger struck up a conversation with the white quarterback's father. He was easy to pick out, after all, a pale face in a section full of dark faces. By the end of the game, the quarterback's father had been invited to stay at the stranger's house for the next home game.

Everyone wanted to reach out to the white quarterback. He had come hundreds of miles from his native Michigan to this strange place -- to Jackson State University, a historically black college -- because he had nowhere else to go, with a past he was trying to escape. He didn't know what to expect. He sure didn't expect all this. All the support and attention and generosity directed his way was startling.

Just a few months before, no college wanted anything to do with him. Now, this novelty act of a quarterback was suddenly a minor celebrity.

In a state that was crippled by racial intolerance, the Jackson State fans didn't care that he was different from them. They didn't care about the trouble in his past and the chilling word that was attached to him. Or maybe it was because of the differences, and because of the trouble, that they reached out.

Maybe this was the latter stages of a dream come to fruition.