What is mercy? Just ask David McAllister, a blind, 77-year-old ex-convict.

Twenty-two years ago McAllister kidnapped 10-year-old Chris Carrier, shot him and left him for dead in the Florida Everglades. Although blinded in his left eye by the bullet, the boy survived. David McAllister escaped, and for more than two decades the case went unsolved. That is until last fall when a distraught McAllister, his frail body bedridden in a Miami nursing home, confessed to the crime.

After learning of the confession, Carrier, now 32, visited McAllister at his nursing home. But Chris did not go in anger or bitterness. Rather, he went to pray with his would-be murderer and share the good news of Jesus that had transformed his own life. You see, Chris Carrier lives on the side of mercy.

Wellington Boone, quoted in New Man, January/February 1997, p. 90