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Good morning, I was nine years old when Stephen Lawrence was stabbed to death less than half a mile from my front door. For years afterwards, I couldn’t walk past the bus stop where his life was so tragically cut short without thinking about him. His death changed the way that black immigrant families like mine felt about our new home. In an instant, it seemed we were no longer welcome. We felt vulnerable and conspicuous. We feared similar racist attacks on people we knew, people like us. Stephen Lawrence’s murder not only changed the atmosphere for those of us living in Eltham, in south-east, London, at the time, but in the 25 years that have followed, it has turned out to be a defining moment in our nation’s history. Following the initial failure of the criminal justice system to convict the people responsible for their son’s death, Doreen and Neville Lawrence campaigned for justice for a number of years until Jack Straw commissioned the Macpherson report. When it was published – six years after the stabbing – it branded the Metropolitan Police “institutionally racist” in its handling of his murder. But from this tragedy, there has come hope for others - systemic changes in the way racially-motivated crimes are investigated hopefully means that other families will get justice. In the three-part documentary Stephen: The Murder that Changed a Nation which began last night on ��ѿ��ý One, director James Rogan said he wanted the viewers to feel the Lawrence family’s emotions as we mark 25 years since the tragedy. Yes, the murder brought about changes for good; but at the heart of the story is a family left heartbroken by a senseless crime, a wholly unnecessary death. And yet in the middle of this heartbreak Stephen’s father Neville Lawrence has said that he forgives his son’s killers. There are times when I question my faith. But when I hear stories like this – of people ready to forgive in the face of cruelty and injustice and murder and loss – I am knocked sideways. It persuades me that there is some higher purpose than that which we see. Because forgiveness in light of these acts of hatred makes no sense. As Holocaust survivor Corrie Ten boom says: “Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart.” There is a cognitive dissonance in this decision to forgive, which rails against our sense of justice. It lets people off the hook when they don’t deserve it. But it is precisely because of this, that I find forgiveness beautiful and profound. It is extravagant in its generosity; it is unnecessary in its mercy. It speaks to me of the open-armed nature of a God who is full of compassion. Perhaps a bit more compassion is what’s needed from each of us in the everyday encounters of our ordinary lives.