FORGIVENESS:

THE mother of Anthony Walker drew deeply on her Christian faith yesterday to find forgiveness for the racist killers of her son, who face up to 30 years in jail.
Gee Walker, 49, had listened to every harrowing detail of the ambush by white racist thugs that left her son, a gifted black A-level student, with an ice axe embedded in his skull. …

Within minutes Mrs Walker, a mother of six, emerged from the court arm in arm with two of her four daughters to offer words of compassion to Taylor and Barton: “Do I forgive them? At the point of death Jesus said, ‘I forgive them because they do not know what they do’. I have got to forgive them. I still forgive them.

“It will be difficult but we have no choice but to live on for Anthony. Each of us will take a piece of him and will carry on his life.”

The contrast between the 18-year-old victim, a devout Christian, committed student and talented basketball player who wanted to become a lawyer, and his white racist killers could not have been more stark.

Mrs Walker, matriarch to the only black family in Tarbock, Huyton, in Merseyside, spoke eloquently about how her evangelical Christian faith demanded that she forgive them. But she faltered and the tears fell as she recalled having to say goodbye to her son as he lay in intensive care with a 3ft ice axe protruding from his head.

more (via Mark Shea)–note, by the way, that this doesn’t mean that the killers should go free.