NO
GRUDGE

Topics: Enemies; Forgiveness; Grace; Love; Tragedy

Reference: Matthew 5:43–48

In May 1987, thirty-nine American seamen were killed in the Persian Gulf when an Iraqi pilot hit their ship, the USS Stark, with a missile. The son of one of these seamen, John Kiser, age five, stood with his hand on his heart as his father’s coffin was loaded onto a plane to go to the United States.

“I don’t have to mourn or wear black, because I know my husband is in heaven,” John’s mother said to reporters. “I am happy, because I know he is better off.”

Later she and John sent a letter and an Arabic New Testament to the pilot of the Iraqi plane, addressed to “the man who attacked the Stark, Dad’s ship, in the hope that it will show that even the son and the wife do not hold any grudge and are at the same time praying for the one who took the life of our father.”

—Roger Carswell, How Small a Whisper (Kregel, 2000)