The Girl Who Asked for His Reinstatement

In August 2014, thirteen-year-old Mo'ne Davis became the first girl to pitch a shutout in Little League World Series history. Her seventy-mile-per-hour fastball made her a national sensation overnight. Seven months later, a college baseball player named Joey Casselberry at Bloomsburg University in Pennsylvania posted a vulgar, sexist tweet about her. The university dismissed him from the team immediately.

The story could have ended there. Most people would have considered justice served. But Mo'ne Davis did something that stunned the sports world. She personally contacted Bloomsburg University and asked them to reinstate Casselberry. "Everyone deserves a second chance," she said. "I know he didn't mean it in that way."

She was thirteen years old. He was a college athlete who had publicly degraded her. And she used whatever influence she had not to bury him but to lift him back up.

That is a picture of what the Almighty does with every one of us. We have all spoken carelessly, acted cruelly, and posted things in the ledger of our lives that we wish we could delete. And God, the offended party, the One with every right to let the consequences stand, instead advocates for our restoration. "As far as the east is from the west," the psalmist writes, "so far has He removed our transgressions from us."

Forgiveness is not pretending the offense never happened. Mo'ne knew exactly what was said about her. But she decided that his future mattered more than her grievance. That is the heart of the Gospel — the wounded One interceding for the ones who wounded Him.