My Editorial to the Lima News Newspaper in My Hometown

In 1971 I appeared in Allen County Juvenile Court on charges of Assault & Battery with my friend Ross Caudill; I was fourteen years old, he was slightly older.

We were typical teenagers in some ways; we played basketball on the neighborhood court on Elizabeth Street and sandlot football in a vacant lot on Grand Avenue with our friends from North Junior High. In other ways we were non-typical; not every kid ends up in Juvenile Court.

A few years later our lives took two radically different roads in life. Within a few weeks of each other in 1974 I became a Christian and Ross Caudill murdered police officer William Brown.

In the thirty-five years that have followed I’ve learned many things from God; perhaps the greatest thing I learned is the line from the song Amazing Grace…how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.

I’m so grateful for God’s grace and mercy; there was nothing I did to deserve a life different from Ross Caudill’s.

I realize it was God’s grace that took me from a fourteen year old boy who was living very much like Ross Caudill (I drank, I did drugs, I stole, I lied and I cheated) and changed the trajectory of my life.

Grace too, allows me to say how thankful I am that I’m not the same person I was thirty-five years ago; none of us are. God’s grace has afforded me second chances in life, and third chances and fifteenth chances…

In looking at my life and God’s grace and mercy I find myself in the lineage of a long line of murders, liars, cheaters and thieves; all found in the Bible and better known as Moses, Peter, Jacob and David.

I never want to forget where I’ve come from because it reminds me that given the right set of circumstances I am capable of doing anything; all of us are.

Remembering my past allows me to have great compassion for those who are in the circumstances I once was in.

 

As a pastor in inner city Columbus, Ohio every day I have the privilege of ministering grace and mercy to people who are, or have been, murderers, drug addicts, liars, alcoholics and thieves; all of which Ross Caudill once was. Without God’s grace and mercy none of us would have a second chance in life. For Moses, Peter, Jacob and David all of their actions came with consequences they each had to live with. Nevertheless, each one became something great for God after their failures and sin.