We’re doing a One Life To Live campaign this coming September 28 (Monday) at the Arellano University’s Legarda campus with freshmen students who are taking the NSTP. It’s a fruit of our years of prayer for this campus, which boasts of more than 8,000 students.
And as I was pondering on what to write, I remembered a blog I recently wrote regarding One Life to Live, which I thought is worth writing again to be reminded.
I’ve been a really big fan of John Grisham, with whom I should say, is a great court-room drama novelist. During the first quarter of this year, I remember finishing one of his best-selling novel The Chamber.
I saw the movie once, which starred Chris O’Donnel (who played Robin in Batman movie) and the multi-talented Gene Hackman which was shown in 1996.
But the story speaks volume about wrong decisions that led to life-long regrets.
Story was about a Ku Klux Klansman (KKK) by the name of Sam Cayhall, who was the principal character, involved in the 1967 bombing of a Chicago law office owned by Marvin Kramer, a radical Jewish lawyer.
Cayhall had been involved in planting a bomb in Kramer’s office, but the one who planted it, by the name of Rollie Wedge, made some time delays.
They were supposed to intimidate Kramer by simply bombing his office, but the delay, which reached till 8 in the morning, led to the death of Kramer and his two twin sons when the bomb went off.
That’s where the story revolved.
Sam was arrested, tried three times and later sentenced to death in 1981. He was scheduled to die via gas chamber on August 8, 1990.
And as the precious minutes waste away during his final moments of existence inside the Maximum Security Unit in Mississippi, Sam, who in all his life, was an unrepentant racist, finally swallowed his pride and bitterness by confessing before a Christian pastor the wicked deeds he had done for the past three decades.
This was an excerpt of his final words while confessing his sins before a Christian pastor by the name of Ralph:
“…It was wrong to be in the Klan, hating everybody and planting bombs. But I didn’t kill those boys. There was no intent to harm anyone. That bomb was supposed to go off in the middle of the night…but it was wired by someone else.
“But I COULD’VE STOPPED IT. And that makes me guilty. Those little boys would be alive today IF I HAD ACTED DIFFERENTLY after the bomb was planted.”
It’s really possible that something like that happens all over the world. Regrets. We all have our own stories of regret. I had mine too.
But all of us can learn tons of lessons from the mistakes of our past., Lessons which could set us free from the chamber of life-long guilt and regrets.
With just ONE LIFE TO LIVE, I hope and pray that each of us would be able to live wisely, LEARNING HUMBLY by LEARNING from Jesus who said in Matthew 11:28-29:
28“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
Life is short, let’s Learn from the Master.