Captured by Grace, No One is Beyond the Reach of a Loving God by Dr. David Jeremiah is another book that is hard to put down. Dr. Jeremiah could not have done a better intro when he shared about the Turkey Throwing Case that made it to the New York Times in 2005. I would not have known that it was so talked about until I googled it.
It was a case of Victoria Ruvolo who was almost killed by Ryan Cushing, a reckless 19 year old boy from Long Island who deliberately struck a 20 pound frozen turkey on a windshield of her car. This got her into eight hours of surgery and three weeks of recovery. Her face shattered like pottery, stapled together by doctors with titanium plates. Surgeons who have rebuilt her face said the impact might have caused her brain damage. Here are some articles from New York Times just so you will have a grasp of how true this story is: Deal in Turkey-Throwing Case After Victim Calls for Leniency and Pushing Past the Trauma to Forgiveness.
Accompanied by several friends and relatives, Ms. Ruvolo, a 44-year-old office manager, came to court wearing a black pantsuit and a gold cross on a chain for her first face-to-face meeting with Mr. Cushing.
Stopping to speak to her on his way out of the courtroom, Mr. Cushing choked on an apology and began to cry. For an intensely emotional few minutes, Ms. Ruvolo alternately embraced him tightly, stroked his face and patted his back as he sobbed uncontrollably.
Many of the two dozen people in court – prosecutors, court officers and reporters – choked back tears.
“I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,” Mr. Cushing said over and over again. “I didn’t mean it.” Most of their exchange was whispered, but at one point Ms. Ruvolo’s advice to him was just barely audible.“It’s O.K., it’s O.K.,” she said. “I just want you to make your life the best it can be.”
I do not know what else to call that but GRACE. I totally found myself choking up as I read through the articles. This is something that has happened in real life and not just one of the pages from Les Miserables. Truth be told, when something grave like this happens to anyone, our default will be to cry out for justice, to give the criminal what he deserves. But Ms. Ruvolo thought otherwise and that must have come from something beyond her.
Dr. Jeremiah penned it perfectly when he said, “Grace is shocking—something like the heavenly converse of a traffic accident. When love is returned for evil, we can’t help stopping to rubberneck. Grace is the delivery of a jewel that nobody ordered, a burst of light in a room where everyone forgot it was dark.”
Dr. David Jeremiah perfectly weaves in the stories of Apostle Paul and John Newton (the former slave driver and the composer of the song “Amazing Grace”) and tells of their respective radical stories of Grace they found in Christ. I love how Dr. Jeremiah defines grace in a manner that it allows the reader to have a better grasp of what it is like and how it is still true even in the present day. For those who know what it is like, Captured by Grace will make them want to grab hold of it once again and who are yet to find it, long for it.
*Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from Thomas Nelson Publishers as part of their book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”
