Sometimes I write what I want here—words that illuminate the path for me, or that I think might be of interest to my friends. I like doing that. I can look at what I’ve written and feel good about it.
I don’t think this is that.
Once in a while, things simply jump out at me, and I can’t stop the words (and miscellaneous accoutrements).
I have a story. Perhaps it’s two stories. Maybe even more.
I hope you have time to read them.
A couple of days ago, in our little town, two young men vandalized a bathroom in the oldest restaurant in town, a little burger joint that opened the year I was born. The owners posted a couple of photos taken from their security camera on social media and asked if anyone could help them find the boys, or report it to the police, since they were aware of the event.
Dozens of folks responded with varying messages. I didn’t.
I wish that were strictly true. I should have said, I didn’t put my response into print. My brain thought it, though. Perhaps even shouted it internally.
“I hope they throw the book at them! Nobody should get away with stuff like that!”
And that should have been the end of it. From my perspective, anyway. But, I think Someone had a message to deliver. Again.
The next day, there was another post from the restaurant. A thoughtful one about the dad who saw his son’s photo in that post and accompanied his boy to the police station. Next, he called the restaurant’s owner to talk with him. The situation is in hand. No charges will be filed, although restitution will be made.
I read the post, which largely praised the dad for helping his boy take responsibility, to the Lovely Lady sitting nearby (you know she eschews social media of all ilks) and was inexplicably weeping as I read.
Did I say inexplicably? That suggests I had no idea why the story triggered that response. I did.
I do. But I need to tell another story to help you get there with me.
The year was 1968. The two young boys looked up from their argument about who did and who did not. They heard heavy equipment at work somewhere in the neighborhood. Their neighborhood!
Their parents owned three and a half acres, just inside the city limits. But all the land around was theirs, too. Their playground. Their hiking trails. Their hidden forts and battlefields. And someone was destroying their space!
The barefoot boys watched the bulldozers and the backhoes at work, toppling orange trees and pushing over palm trees, until they had to go home for supper. Then, after they ate, they wandered back to where the equipment had been parked for the evening—surely to resume the destruction in the morning.
There was no intent to begin with, but the frustration and anger at the intrusion on their territory drove them to do some damage to various pieces of the big yellow earthmovers—some of it much more significant than they dreamed.
They were seen. Authorities were notified. And the next day after school, the two delinquents were picked up by their father in the old 1957 Ford station wagon, instead of waiting for the bus.
I won’t make you sit through the description of what followed. Suffice it to say, the worst punishment I ever received from my father was knowing I had disappointed him so extremely. His silence was far worse than any spanking I ever received at his hand.
No charges were filed by the owners. It took two years for my brother and me to pay the damages.
But apparently, I hadn’t learned my lesson—at least not the one lesson I really needed to learn from that experience. Oh, I have never purposely destroyed anyone else’s property again—just because.
But I was probably thirty years old the year my dad visited in my home. One evening, we heard a local news report about some kids who had destroyed property in a nearby town. I said the words out loud that time. Out loud, in front of my father.
“I hope they throw the book at them! They need to pay!”
My dad, ordinarily a law-and-order man to the core, looked at me with a gentle gaze and said the words:
“I remember a time 20 years ago when I was really happy they didn’t.”
Oh.
He didn’t have to say another thing.
I learned my lesson that day. Finally.
But, it seems I didn’t.
Tears come again.
I didn’t deserve grace. Or mercy. But I grabbed hold of it and held on for dear life.
Still, again and again (even now, as an old man), I want to see others pay the full price for their transgression.
I repent. Again.
As I was still contemplating this lesson I need to learn anew, I sat down at my piano to look for a new hymn to share with the folks who are kind enough to encourage me in my musical journey these days.
It doesn’t happen often, but one song seemed to call my name as I sight-read through it. I mentioned it to the Lovely Lady, and she was patient enough to stand and listen to me stumble to the end of it.
“It’s beautiful. But the tempo marking is a good bit slower than you are playing it. Maybe you should try it at sixty beats per minute, as it calls for.”
I laughed. And agreed.
And it all began to come together—the lesson I need to begin to apply again, and the words of the new piece I was playing. You quite possibly know it.
“We’ve a Story to Tell to the Nations”
I’ve always sung that song fast, in a martial style. Driving. Pushing on. Like soldiers getting to the task.
Not this time.
The stories will take a lifetime to tell. And longer to learn the morals of said stories (it seems).
Grace takes its time, moving in the manner we describe it—gracefully.
Mercy is a slow waltz, shared with all the others on the dance floor.
When we shove them down each other’s throats, with threats and judgments, their merits are diminished, even for us.
And, if the story we share with the nations is flavored with our sense of hard justice, rather than the tenderness of God’s love, how will they have any desire to hear it, much less accept it?
I can’t be the unmerciful servant, having been forgiven a debt I could never, never have paid—only to grab my fellow debtors by the throats and demand payment for their insignificant offense.
I have been him, though.
Change has been slow. Perhaps too slow.
But the music’s still playing.
I’d still like to tell you a story.
This could take a while.
“We’ve a story to tell to the nations,
that shall turn their hearts to the right,
a story of truth and mercy,
a story of peace and light,
a story of peace and light.
Refrain:
For the darkness shall turn to dawning,
and the dawning to noonday bright;
and Christ’s great kingdom shall come on earth,
the kingdom of love and light.
We’ve a Savior to show to the nations,
who the path of sorrow hath trod,
that all of the world’s great peoples
might come to the truth of God,
might come to the truth of God.”
(from We’ve a Story to Tell to the Nations, by H Ernest Nichol, 1896)
“Then the king called in the man he had forgiven and said, ‘You evil servant! I forgave you that tremendous debt because you pleaded with me. Shouldn’t you have mercy on your fellow servant, just as I had mercy on you?’”
(Matthew 18:32-33, NLT)
© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2026. All Rights Reserved.