Seeing My Son’s Murderer

Some moments are frozen in time: For me, it was October 30, 2010, 11:56 p.m., when our youngest son Antonio Maurice Smith, at 34 years old, beat his father to the grave.

A phone call awakened my wife and me. She answered and did not utter a sound for what seemed an eternity. Tony, who was working at a restaurant, had been shot during an attempted robbery.

I desperately asked God to save Tony's life and glorify himself. I had great aspirations for Tony. My prayer was that Tony be spared so he could serve God at a high level of consecration.

But an hour later another phone call informed us that he was dead. My heart broke.

During the trial I saw the back of Tony's murderer, then 18 years old. I saw his mother and some family members weeping as the judge sentenced him to many years in prison. I prayed about my feelings toward and relationship with this young man.

Søren Kierkegaard was right when he contended that life has to be lived forward but can only be understood backwards. In life some things happen that are not immediately perceived as beneficial. Following our son's murder, which did not seem to have any redemptive value, the question God asked me was "Do you really believe what you preach?"

For 44 years I have preached about the forgiveness that Joseph, Job, and Jesus extended to those who brought great pain in their lives. I knew how to explain, illustrate, and apply forgiveness from a biblical perspective. Now God was telling me if I really believed what I had been preaching, then I must, by his grace, live that forgiveness now.

But I had also preached about God sparing Rahab from destruction in Jericho (Joshua 6:17) and about God sparing Simon Peter the night before he was to be executed (Acts 12:6). And 30 years prior to Tony's murder, I also had been working at a store on a Saturday night around 11:30 p.m. and was robbed at gunpoint. God spared me. I struggled with how God could spare Rahab, Peter, and me, but not spare Tony.

Though the wound to my heart is still open, I have forgiven Tony's murderer. Jesus continues to redress my wound and is bringing me to progressive wholeness.

God had been preparing me to mirror the forgiveness modeled by Jesus Christ who died for the ungodly (Romans 5:6). Archbishop Desmond Tutu reminded me in No Future Without Forgiveness that forgiveness takes the sting out of memory. I confess that the ache of memory is still there, but the paralyzing sting has been swallowed up in God's agape love.

I asked prayer warriors to pray for me as I prepared to write the young man and to pray that he would respond affirmatively and ultimately add my name to the visitors list so that I could come and tell him in person—"Jesus loves and forgives you and so do I." After nearly two years, in September 2012 I finally mailed that letter.

He added me to his visitors list in 2014. Soon by God's grace I will see the young man whose face was the last face our son saw before standing in the presence of the Lord. I will offer the young man the forgiveness that Christ offers to me and to all who will believe.

Robert Smith, Jr. professor of Christian preaching Beeson Divinity School Birmingham, Alabama