Restitution

A Michigan judge is taking a unique approach to combat shoplifting, ordering offenders to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot as part of their community service. Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the “Walmart wash” sentence will deter future thefts and serve as a reminder of the consequences of stealing.

Judge Clothier explained, “I don’t think everybody that steals is a bad person. Sometimes people are just down on their luck. But there’s going to be consequences when you break the law.” The judge introduced this unusual form of punishment in Grand Blanc Township, located 50 miles north of Detroit, and expects to assign 75 to 100 people to wash cars at weekend events in March and April.

Walmart has agreed to provide water and supplies for the community service events. Clothier said he was shocked by the extent of retail thefts after taking the bench in January, with many offenders coming from both Michigan and out of state. “It’s just crazy,” he remarked, recalling a day when he had 48 such cases on his docket.

The judge believes that the community service will not only be effective but also humbling. “I think it will be humiliating to be out there washing cars if you see someone you know.” Thus emphasizing the potential embarrassment of being caught in the act. Clothier even plans to lead by example, adding, “I will be there washing cars with them.”

If you've never heard of an "accidental car theft," then perhaps a rather strange news story from Portland, Oregon, hasn't reached you just yet.

In late October, Erin Hatzi reported to police that her red Subaru Impreza had been stolen out of her driveway—according to her surveillance footage, "a woman [had] calmly enter[ed] her car and [drove] away" with it. Calmly, indeed: In fact, the woman had sat in the car for a couple minutes. "We were really confused because it didn't seem like the normal actions of a car thief," said Hatzi.

The next day, "[p]olice stopped a woman attempting to return the car outside of Hatzi's home." The driver offered up this explanation: The night before, "she had been sent to the neighborhood to pick up her friend's car and accidentally took Hatzi's vehicle instead." The friend did not see the car until that morning, and upon realizing the mix-up, left a note and gas money inside the car and sent it back to its rightful owner.

So what had happened? According to police, "older Subaru keys are interchangeable and can occasionally be used to open different cars."

Potential Preaching Angles: May this bizarre happily-ever-after news story remind us that while we might jump to immediate conclusions about our situation, God has a bigger picture in mind—a picture in which the car might be returned at the end.

In November 2012, Jordyn Howe, a 14-year-old student at South-Miami Dade High School, took his stepfather's pistol from its hiding place in the bedroom closet and brought it to school. He just wanted to show off the weapon to friends. Howe boarded the school bus, walked to the back, and allowed a friend to load a bullet.

According to a witness, Howe began "playing with it," pulling the trigger and aiming around "like pretending." But then Howe lifted the gun toward a 13-year-old girl named "Jina" Guzman-DeJesus and pulled the trigger. The bullet struck the girl in the neck and eventually killed her.

Jordyn Howe immediately confessed, pleading guilty to manslaughter with a deadly weapon, among other charges. Two years later, in June 2014, the victim's mother, Ady Guzman-DeJesus, faced her daughter's killer in court. But instead of rage and revenge, she gave Jordyn Howe a tearful hug. "I'm sorry," Howe stammered as Guzman-DeJesus wrapped her arms around him, fighting back his own tears.

It was part of an extraordinary gesture of forgiveness from a grieving mother who also blessed a plea deal that will allow Howe to avoid prison. Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Ellen Sue Venzer said, "In 20 years, I've watched human tragedy unfold in this courtroom. I could have never imagined a victim's mother embracing her child's killer." Howe will remain under the supervision of the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice until he reaches 21 years of age. He must also speak to schools about the dangers of gun violence at least 12 times a year— alongside the mother of the girl he killed. In light of the unusual display of forgiveness and the gracious sentencing, Judge Venzer had the final words to Howe: "I hope and pray you do not squander this opportunity you've been given."

One night before Christmas, Clay and Velma Lykins of Jefferson County, Kentucky, stepped onto their porch to turn off the Christmas lights and saw a large object wrapped in plastic, sitting at the end of their driveway. Under the plastic was the wicker chair that had been stolen from their front porch 18 years earlier, along with a note:

To whom it may concern: Approximately 13 to 17 years ago my husband stole this wicker rocking chair from the porch of this house. I am ashamed of his behavior and am returning this stolen item. I have since been divorced from my husband and have since been "born again." My life has completely changed and I want to undo any wrongdoing to the best of my ability. I know this chair is not in the same condition as when it was stolen and I apologize. I now live in another state, Tennessee, and am rarely in this vicinity. I realize the cowardly fashion in which I am returning this, but the reason is obvious. I will not bother you again. Please forgive us. Sincerely.

The rocker was placed in the bedroom along with the letter where it became a treasured keepsake.

A Florida judge handed down an unusual sentence to a husband who had a domestic dispute with his wife.

During the courthouse hearing, Judge Hurley told Mr. Bray that he would he would need to figure out a plan for marriage counseling, but then Hurley added the novel part of the sentence:

[Mr. Bray] is going to stop by somewhere and he's going to get some flowers. He's going to get a card, he's going to get flowers, and then he's going to go home, pick up his wife, get dressed and take her to Red Lobster, and after that Red Lobster they're going to go bowling.

An attorney jokingly asked the judge, "Does he have to let her win?"

"No," Judge Hurley replied, but he also stressed that he wasn't joking. If Bray failed to follow through, he would be back in court.

The judge acknowledged that it was a very minor incident, but he didn't want to let Mr. Bray off the hook. So after checking with Mrs. Bray that she did not felt safe enough to invite her husband back home, Mrs. Bray said, "I love my husband and want to work things out." Then the judge turned to Mr. Bray and said, "Flowers, birthday card, Red Lobster, bowling. You got your work cut out for you, do you understand?"

'Yes sir,' Bray replied.

How does God respond to a Christian who asks for guidance? It all depends. There's a big difference between a Christian who has "irregular, discouraging slips into disobedience that are quickly repented of" and a Christian who persists in "blatant, unrepentant refusals to obey God." Consider the following illustration:

Suppose you wanted to sit down with the owner of the small company that you work for and get some career advice. Tuesday is your appointed meeting day. When Tuesday arrives, you are late. By an hour. For no good reason. The owner is agitated that he has been waiting for you, yet in general he considers you a wonderful employee. It is safe to say that before he would share his career advice with you, you should genuinely apologize for being late. Yet being late—as long as it comes with an apology—will not cause him to withhold his advice.

If on the other hand you are not a good employee and have been recklessly embezzling money from the company—and the owner knows it—you should not expect him to share career advice with you. The only advice you should expect from him is, "Stop stealing money and make restitution!" So it is with God. If we are to receive guidance from God, we must apologize for any disobedience currently in our lives, but habitual, unrepentant sin will render God silent except for one word: repent.

How does temptation come? Sometimes with lots of warning and time to think, and we may succumb or resist after much deliberation. At other times temptation presents itself in the span of a few moments, and we react, making a quick decision to follow or flee from wrong desires.

Sudden temptation was what one man experienced when he walked into a suburban Chicago Walgreens in June of 2011. According to the Chicago Tribune, a security video shows that he walked up to an ATM in the store, set his drink on the floor, and did his banking. He then leaned over and picked up his drink, and did a double-take at what he saw on the floor. There was a bag with a Chase bank logo on it filled with cash and checks. According to the Tribune, the security video shows that "he pauses for a moment, his eyes riveted to the floor. Then he takes a long look around, picks something up and slips out the door."

The man got in his car with the money and drove away. The bag contained over $17,000. By the time he had driven to his home suburb some 45 minutes away, he had time to weigh his decision further, and realizing he had probably been captured on video he decided to turn in the money to the bank, according to the Tribune. Unfortunately, he also decided to lie about where he found the money. He walked into a Chase bank in Rolling Meadows and said that he had found the money in a Rolling Meadows mall.

The story hit the newspapers. Writer Burt Constable says that the man was featured in newspapers around the world, gave interviews to radio and TV stations, was hailed as a hero on websites, received a gift basket and small gifts from strangers, was the object of romantic inquiries, was repeatedly asked about a reward, and even drew high praise from a nun for being so honest.

The Rolling Meadows police weren't so sure. It didn't take long to learn where the money had actually come from, and the FBI was brought in to aid in the investigation. A few weeks later, the police confronted the man with the truth, and he confessed to what had happened. He was fined $500 for filing a false police report. Far worse, no doubt, was the embarrassment he suffered as the real story also hit the newspapers.

After the truth came out, he admitted in an interview, "I did have that thought in my mind (upon finding the money): Yes, I could do a lot with that. I considered that to be the human reaction to seeing a large sum of money in front of me."

Roy Borges writes in Today's Christian:

Locked behind the razor-wire fences of a Florida prison is no place to spend a holiday. I'd spent 15 Christmases under these less-than-festive conditions, but this year my situation looked even bleaker. I was stuck in confinement—a prison inside a prison where the supposed troublemakers are sent. In reality, anyone can find himself in the hole by irritating the wrong person.

Because I was going to be locked in a cell 24 hours a day through Christmas, I figured nothing memorable could happen. Beyond a five-minute shower three times weekly, there wasn't much to look forward to….

In a way, that Christmas was like the first Christmas 2,000 years ago. Most people went about their lives paying bills, cooking dinner, traveling to and fro. …A few shepherds working the late-night shift got a spectacular celestial show from some angels who proclaimed, "Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace and good will to men!" (Luke 2:14). …And some wise men, eastern Magi, had begun their journey to Jerusalem looking for someone called "The King of the Jews."…But for the rest of the world, it was just another day. No holiday music, no discount sales, no trees with lights. …

Christmas night in confinement, alone in my cell, I read in my Bible about Paul and Silas, who were also inside a prison. Despite their miserable predicament, they were praying and singing hymns to God while the other prisoners listened.

The lights went out and I stared at the ceiling from my bunk, wondering if I could praise God in the midst of my circumstances. I could hear a mouse nibbling on some crackers I left out for him. Then suddenly I heard a voice come out of the vent above the toilet. It was Andrew in the next cell. "Merry Christmas, Roy," he said.

"Merry Christmas, Andrew," I replied.

"Do you know any Christmas songs?" Andrew asked.

"Yeah, I know a few."

"I'll sing one if you'll sing one," he said.

"What should we sing?"

"Joy to the World." And he sang every verse. I sang the chorus with him. Then it was my turn and I chose "Silent Night." Then he sang "O Come All Ye Faithful," and I answered with "Feliz Navidad."…

"I have another song," Andrew said, and sang "O Holy Night." Silence filled the quad as everyone listened. It was a moment I'll never forget. It not only reminded me of Paul and Silas, but it made me realize every day is Christmas when God has arrived. It wasn't just another day, and I wasn't alone. Emmanuel was in confinement with me, in my cell, blessing me.

I lived for a time with my friend and mentor John MacMurray, where the first rule is to always tell the truth. John and I were sitting in the family room one night when he asked about my new cell phone.

"I got it free," I told him.

"How did you get it for free?" he asked.

"Well, my other one broke, so I took it in to see if they could replace it. They had this new computer system at the store and they didn't have their records. They didn't know whether mine was still under warranty. It wasn't, I knew, because it was more than a year old. The guy asked me about it, and I told him I didn't know, but it was right around a year. Just a white lie, you know. Anyway, the phone was so messed up they replaced it with a newer model. So, I got a free phone."

"Did you ever see that movie The Family Man with Nicolas Cage?" John asked. "There's this scene where Nicolas Cage walks into a store to get a cup of coffee. And Don Cheadle plays the guy working at the counter. There's a girl in line before Nicolas Cage, and she's buying something for ninety-nine cents, and she hands Cheadle a dollar. Cheadle takes nine dollars out of the till and counts it out, giving her way too much change. She sees that he is handing her way too much money, yet she picks it up and puts it in her pocket without saying a word. As she is walking out the door, Cheadle stops her to give her another chance. He asks her if there is anything else she needs. She shakes her head no and walks out."

"I see what you're getting at, John," I say.

"Let me finish," he says. "So Cheadle looks over at Nicolas Cage, and he says, 'Did you see that? She was willing to sell her character for nine dollars. Nine dollars!'"

After a little while, I spoke up. "Do you think that is what I am doing with the phone? Do you think I am selling my character?" And to be honest, I said this with a smirk.

"I do," John said. "The Bible talks about having a calloused heart. That's when sin, after a period of time, has so deceived us we no longer care whether our thoughts and actions are right or wrong. Our hearts will go there easily, and often over what looks like little things—little white lies. All I am saying to you, as your friend, is, watch for this kind of thing."

I went back to the store the next day. It cost me more than nine dollars, but I got my character back.

—Reprinted from the Catalyst GroupZine Volume 2: The Culture Issue. Copyright © 2006. Used by permission of INJOY & Thomas Nelson Publishers. This article is originally adapted from To Own a Dragon © 2006 by Donald Miller and John MacMurray. Used by permission of NavPress—www.navpress.com. All rights reserved.

On June 17, 1966, two black men strode into the Lafayette Grill in Paterson, New Jersey, and shot three people to death. Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, a celebrated black boxer, and an acquaintance were falsely charged and wrongly convicted of the murders in a highly publicized and racially charged trial. The fiercely outspoken boxer maintained his claims of innocence and became his own jailhouse lawyer. After serving nineteen years, Carter was released.

As a free man, Carter reflected on how he has responded to injustice in his life.

The question invariably arises, it has before and it will again: "Rubin, are you bitter?" And in answer to that I will say, "After all that's been said and done—the fact that the most productive years of my life, between the ages of twenty-nine and fifty, have been stolen; the fact that I was deprived of seeing my children grow up—wouldn't you think I would have a right to be bitter? Wouldn't anyone under those circumstances have a right to be bitter? In fact, it would be very easy to be bitter. But that has never been my nature, or my lot, to do things the easy way. If I have learned nothing else in my life, I've learned that bitterness only consumes the vessel that contains it. And for me to permit bitterness to control or to infect my life in any way whatsoever would be to allow those who imprisoned me to take even more than the 22 years they've already taken. Now that would make me an accomplice to their crime.

In two full pages of advertisement, the Japanese government declared its desire to right wrongs committed in World War II. The Asian Women's Fund, led by former Japanese Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama, placed the ads to announce the offer of atonement payments to "comfort women." During the war women were forced to provide sexual services to members of Japan's wartime military. In an effort to make atonement, the organization sent donations, messages, and a letter of apology from the Prime Minister to hundreds of former "comfort women."

Murayama says, "We hope these projects have helped to remove at least some portion of the permanent scars these women bear. I consider it essential that we Japanese maintain a firm conviction that we must never violate the dignity of women again, as we did in our treatment of 'comfort women.'"

In the movie Life as a House, George, a forty-something employee at an architectural firm, loses his job and his health. When he learns he has only four months to live, the disrepair of his sorrowful life comes into painful focus.

George (played by Kevin Kline) determines to spend the remaining weeks of his life building the house he'd always dreamed of. With the help of his estranged teenage son (played by Hayden Christensen) and ex-wife (played by Kristin Scott Thomas), he tears down his shack and builds a beautiful home on the California coast. The restoration of his house is a metaphor of his life.

During this process, George tells his son, Sam, about how his alcoholic father (Sam's grandfather) caused an accident in which a woman was killed and her small child was paralyzed. He aches over the injustice his father caused.

When George dies, he bequeaths the newly built home to Sam. Sam knows in his heart what he needs to do to honor his father's memory and make restitution to someone who has been denied justice. He locates the paralyzed girl in a rundown trailer park.

As Sam and his mother walk through the trailer park, his mother asks, "Are you sure you want to do this?"

"Yes," says Sam.

"You could keep it and rent it out," his mom suggests.

"This is what he wanted," Sam insists.

His mother says, "I read the letter. You read the will. He wanted you to keep it and live in it someday."

Sam says, "All right, maybe it's not what he wanted. But it's what he was hoping for."

As the scene ends, Sam and his mother encounter the woman in a wheelchair hanging laundry on a clothesline. In a voiceover, George's voice can be heard: "Twenty-nine years ago my father crossed a double line. It changed my life and that of a little girl forever. I just can't stop thinking about it."

Sam says to the woman in the wheelchair, "Excuse me. Would you mind if we sit a moment and talk? My father built you a house."

Elapsed time: From the opening credit, this scene begins at 1:58:00 and lasts one and one-half minutes.

Content: Rated R for sexuality and language.

The story is told of a shoplifter who writes to a department store and says, "I've just become a Christian, and I can't sleep at night because I feel guilty. So here's $100 that I owe you."

Then he signs his name, and in a little postscript at the bottom he adds, "If I still can't sleep, I'll send you the rest."

The Tigress of Rome

(900s AD)

Marrying for money was a way of life for Marozia, the woman who dominated the papacy during the 10th century. When barely beyond puberty, she was already the mistress of Pope Sergius, bearing him a son. When Sergius died, Marozia embarked upon a series of marriages to successively wealthier husbands, enriching herself with their estates upon their untimely deaths. Using her beauty and promiscuity, she continued to control the papacy, eventually winning that office for the illegitimate son she had born to Sergius.

Ultimately, Marozia married one rich man too many. Her final husband Hugh of Province, tried to kill Alberic, her son from a previous marriage. Alberic retaliated and not only drove Hugh from the city but also imprisoned his mother--still young, beautiful and very rich--in the lowest dungeon of her own castle, where she died.