By Elaine Rassel
For the past few weeks the Wonderland Theater at Paullina has advised the churches in our area of a film they were showing (showed last Friday-Sunday). The name of the movie was, “Grace Card”.
The movie opened with mother, father, and two boys. The younger of the boys was attempting to ride on his “training-wheels” bicycle when it left the sidewalk and entered the street. Just down the street, a drug deal had been made. With the police in hot pursuit of the dealer, the dealer sped down the street and hit the little boy. He was later sentenced to 10 years for killing the boy.
How does a family deal with this tragedy? Seventeen years later, they were still angry—with God and the killer of their son. The older boy was enrolled in a $20,000 a year private school. The father had become a policeman. His reason for this occupation was that he wanted to prevent other families from what his had gone through.
His wife finally went to counseling. She was able to get “free” counseling as financially they were broke. (The boy’s tuition was part of the problem.) Her husband had been passed up for promotions many times, so his pay basically remained the same. The last time he was passed up for a promotion to someone who had been in the force a shorter time than he, he confronted the sergeant. His answer was, “You have an attitude problem.”
Yes, now he definitely had a problem as the man who received the advancement was now his partner. As if that wasn’t bad enough, his partner was an African American. How could this be a problem? You see, it was an African American teenager that had killed his young son. You can imagine how you could cut the tension with a knife as these two policemen drove in a squad car together. The partner had no idea what the problem was except for the advancement over him.
Time went on in the movie with back flashes from the man’s past. Hatred was ruling his life. He would not go to counseling and try to get help. The partner also had a Sunday job of being a minister of a Baptist Church in their city. There were times when this policeman/minister questioned how he could help this man who had turned to drinking when not on the job.
Matters did not help when his wife was called to the private school and told that their son was not going to graduate and the school would not allow him to return. Now he would have to go to the public school with African Americans. When his dad found this out, the scene was ugly. The son was now in the eyes of his father, as low as the scum of the earth.
One night while on patrol, there was a robbery. The policemen were on foot in pursuit of the robber. The white man fired at the suspect who went down immediately. His partner was shocked that he had shot as quickly as he did. When the mask was pulled up from the boys face—it was his son. A helicopter air lifted him to the hospital. There was enough tension between husband and wife without this happening. After successful surgery, the parents were told they were able to patch him up but that during surgery, it was discovered that he had a kidney ailment that left him with only one kidney functioning. That kidney was the one they had to remove because of the bullet. He was in dire need of a kidney. The mother didn’t match; the father had hypertension, so even though his blood type was the same, he couldn’t donate a kidney.
The policeman partner still, through prayer, asked how he could help his partner. When he approached the doctor with the question, he was told he was able to donate a kidney because he was a match. Do you see the problem now? A black man, who his partner hated because of a previous incident in his life, was willing to give his dying son a kidney. Eventually the minister/policeman, through prayer, reached his partner. And the boy now a man, who had killed the policeman’s younger son years ago, came to the family and wanted to make amends. It was not an easy to forgive and let the hatred go—but it did happen.