He came to my door on a Sunday morning. He was dressed in black. His long sleeved Western collared shirt was sharply embroidered with black across his collarbones.
The wrinkles around his eyes and mouth were set deep. The pain and the joy, the conviction and humility shone from his sharp eyes. His handshake was firm. His voice was gravel.
It was later that I learned it was in a fight that his voicebox was damaged. He'd prayed for healing, but it hadn't yet come.
Seventy-three years old he was, but something supernatural or unnatural must have been sustaining this man. He didn't look a day over sixty.
Over coffee he told his stories.
He grew up in the prairies of Western Canada.
He started running from the law when he was just a boy. The RCMP came to his town, looking for the one who'd been causing vandalism and property damage. They never found him.
Years later he'd approach the redcoats.
"They say the Mountie always gets his man. Well. You never got me."
He was to much for his mother. When the neighbour asked for him to be their farm help, she willingly let him go.
A son on the run.
The farmers were God fearing folk. They were Bible preaching folk.
"On that farm is where my life began."
It was this family that taught him about a God of forgiveness and mercy, of justice, but justice fulfilled.
He'd grow up to be a preacher. For twenty-five years he taught that story of justice fulfilled. Of mercy and forgiveness.
It takes a man to have a soft heart. It takes a man to give it to God. Vengeance is only his to repay.
He preaches his message to hippies and radicals in the states. He was a man who used his hands and got himself dirty when it needed to be done. He was fixing his roof when one of those hippies stood at the bottom of the ladder and asked him,
"Preacher, would you marry my girlfriend and me?"
"Now, why would you ask me to do that?"
"Well, because you're the only preacher that I know...that I know."
He said it just like that.
"After that, those hippies just kept on gettin married. And I kept on marrying them. They kept on coming to me, and i kept on being their preacher. Didn't matter to me that they were running from the draft. Let 'em run. They ran from the draft and into the arms of God."
"Twenty-five years in church ministry will give a man plenty if opportunities to have to forgive. There's nothing like being a pastor to learn to let people go to the hands of God. People will hurt you. Bad. That's when you get to look like Jesus."
"Man will seek revenge. God's man has a heart of flesh."
He and his wife wanted to adopt a child. They waited six years.
"Six years is a long time to be pregnant."
The child they adopted was their first big test in practicing what he'd been preaching. She was trouble. She broke their hearts. She ended up on the streets of Calgary and then in jail. This is where they learned further what forgiveness means when a heart is broken.
A daughter on the run.
Their daughter is serving God now.
He was nearing the end of his life, thinking about his Autumn years, but he knew his job was far from done. He was at the age of retirement, but he had too much left to do.
He made a deal with God. Twenty years he asked for.
"Keep me alive for twenty more years, and I'll give them to change the world."
With twenty years promised and nothing to lose, he knew he could go to the darkest and most dangerous places to tell his tale of justice fulfilled, of mercy and forgiveness and power.
Kenya.
He went to the mountains. He went to the forest. He stood before people who'd run in terror at the attacks of madmen. He told them to forgive.
They'd seen family members tortured, and children kidnapped by their enemies. He told them to forgive.
He'd made a promise to God. Twenty years he'd tell the message. It wasn't up to him to prove it was true.
"I figured that they must have thought I was crazy. I'm some crazy white old man telling them about forgiveness in a tribal society of war and rape. But I knew who I was. I knew who God was. I wasn't here to look good or make friends. I was here to tell the truth. I had twenty years."
The day after he preached forgiveness to the forest tribe, the mountain tribe came down and surrendered themselves willingly.
"Our forgiveness released them to the hand of God. He set their hearts on fire. They're all in jail now. Or dead."
He figured that he and his wife would live there for the rest of their days. His promised twenty years would be spent preaching a hard truth in a hard land.
He didn't know that he'd get an opportunity to practice what he preached.
The Summer day was the same as any other. It ended the same as any other. He drew his wife's bath. He went outside to check the property.
He was white and old and owned his own home. This alone was enough reason to kill him. Five gang members surprised him in the dark. They had clubs and machetes and hearts of hatred and demonized minds.
It takes one swing of a machete to take a limb if a man. He was chopped fifteen times that night on his legs alone. He was sure he would die unless there was supernatural intervention. He cried "Jesus, help me", before he became unconscious.
This was when his voice box was damaged.
"They actually got one of their blades right through my skull. It's pretty gross when you think about it. No brain damage though. You can disagree with that if you want. I don't care."
His jaw was broken in several places. Both arms were broken below the wrists.
They left him for dead.
They beat and raped his wife who they found in the bathtub.
They took what they could and left in his car. But they drove it into a tree, so they left on foot.
They were arrested in a bar not to far away. They had gotten themselves blackout drunk on the money they'd stolen, and were bragging about how they'd killed a white man. The off duty police in the bar arrested them and took them in right there.
Meanwhile, his wife came outside in a sheet, and found him, sure he was dead. When she discovered he wasn't, she tried to lift him to the car that lay under the tree. A woman her age and size couldn't lift him in her state. He regained consciousness long enough to feel the angels carry him to the car.
She drove through the city in the dark, never missing a turn. In the passenger seat, he drifted between conscious and unconscious, alive and dead. He lifted his broken arms and begged to die.
"Take me home. Take me home. Don't close the gates. I can't take the pain anymore."
"Imagine the confusion in heaven. I'd just asked for twenty more years less than a year before."
"He wouldn't let me die. I should have died. But we had a deal. Twenty years, he said. I had more to do."
He began quoting scripture. Matthew 5 he said out loud like a command. Jesus' words told him he must forgive. He must bless his enemies.
Ephesians 3:21-22
Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.
Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.
He preached to himself. His wife preached it with him as she drove.
At the hospital, the staff kept saying they were shocked that they were both alive. The doctor lost count of the stitches. He said later that he just kept going until he was done, stitching longer than a living person should ever need and survive.
Not a single tendon in his legs was severed. He would still walk.
He said that it was later after the bandages came off that he decided to count his scars.
"I figured one day as I was getting dressed that it was time to see just how much damage they'd done to me. Well, they tried to damage me. And they failed. Because the devil is a loser."
"I counted nine scars on just my one leg. Six on my other. And that's just my legs."
It was in the hospital that he and his wife first talked about forgiveness. They prayed they'd be given the opportunity.
They were given the opportunity to practice what they preached. They were given the opportunity to preach justice fulfilled to these men.
During the trial, one of the men broke out of his bounds and threw a chair at John's wife while she gave her testimony. He was the worst of them, she said.
But years later, when the trial was over, John had his opportunity. He phoned his wife from the jail before going in to see five of the men. She told him that she was so happy he was there. She prayed for him.
He entered the cell and five men in chains sat on the floor before him. They were even more helpless and vulnerable than he had been that Summer night.
In that cell, he preached his most important sermon. He told the men of a God of mercy. A God of forgiveness. A God of justice fulfilled. He told them of how he'd run from the law. He told them of adoption and grace.
He told them of his promise. Twenty years alive meant he could go to the darkest and most dangerous places. He was God's man. He wasn't there to look good or make friends. He was there to tell the truth. He looked them square in the eye, and he told them he forgave them.
Five men in chains gave their lives to Jesus that day on that concrete floor.
"I didn't know what I was going to experience when I went in there, into that cell. I didn't know until after that one of the men had talked to the guard about me before I arrived. He told him they'd been praying. They'd been praying to my God for forgiveness. He told the guard that when he heard that I was coming to see them, he knew my God was real and had answered their prayers."
He was promised twenty more years, and five impossible lives were saved in the first five. He's got fifteen left. He's going back to the darkest places. He wants to help the children orphaned by war and disease.
He's going to keep preaching mercy and forgiveness. And justice fulfilled. Because it's up to God to take vengeance. God's man has a soft heart, and he leaves vengeance to his maker.
