24 Mailboxes

Somewhere in my teen years it had seemed like a good idea to my friends and I to go out and demolish twenty-four mailboxes and have a blast doing it. It was fun, and we had the neighborhood bragging rights—until a dreaded phone call a few days later informing me that we “got caught.” After recovering from that horrible feeling of my heart sinking into my stomach and just sort of sitting there for several weeks, it was time to face the music. As I stood there and faced the judge, I fully realized that I was completely at his mercy. He had done his homework and knew a good bit about me. He asked me if I had been drinking and why in the world I would do such a thing. I assured him that I hadn’t been drinking and as to why, I said, “It just kind of happened.” After bracing myself for a lecture and the sentence, something magically and mercifully happened. He went on to share a story from his own youthful years about the time when he was walking out of a roller-skating rink and bashed out someone’s car lights with his skates. He said he wasn’t sure why he did it, but figured that it “just kind of happened.” He had determined that I wasn’t likely to be a lifelong criminal and gave me a reduced sentence that consisted primarily of going back to those I had wronged, paying for new mailboxes and agreeing that I would “sin no more.” Mercy is good, and the mercy flowed that day.