I have been guilty of many sins, believe you me, but I have never been tempted to steal (unless you count watching pirated movies in Asia, of course). I just don't see the appeal. Granted, I have never known true hunger, nor the power of a crack-addiction, but I would bet you money the punks who stole our electric bike two nights ago were neither of these. MAYBE I can see how rolling away someone else's bike - such a naughty thing to do - would be thrilling for about ten minutes. I can hear their pubescent laughter as they make it around the first dark corner and out of sight, their prize standing between them like a muzzled pig. But then what does a thief do? You can't just stash a motorbike in your purse. And then, once you've dismembered it and sold it's parts, you just walk into your parents' kitchen, your dad reading the paper, your mom drinking her evening tea, and saunter up to your room and go to bed? Really? How does a person sleep? How is a thief not haunted by their victims' faces, first bewildered and then furious, when they step out of the coffee shop and blink at the spot where they had parked their bike just 20 minutes earlier. And you can't give something like that back in a fit of repentance three days later. You can't even find the poor bikeless foreigners who you ripped off in order to apologize. You are stuck. Stuck with your stinking guilt.But then, isn't that why we are here? To stand on the highest place in the city and announce with great jubilation, "You are guilty no more! You can apologize to this guy (pointing at the cross) and be forgiven. Yahoo!" Though something of that exact nature would land me in jail, I can certainly announce the very same message with my actions - with my response to being ripped off. So this goes out to the guys/gals who took our very old and ready-to-be-replaced electric bike with the slipping breaks: I forgive you.
