The fight against crime is not on­ly phys­i­cal but re­quires a spir­i­tu­al bat­tle.

De­clar­ing time was run­ning out yes­ter­day, act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP), Ju­nior Ben­jamin ac­knowl­edged it was on­ly through God’s grace that he had risen from the “Gut­ter-most to the up­per-most.”

Re­veal­ing this dur­ing a brief but mov­ing ser­mon dur­ing the Wor­ship, Word and War­fare pro­gramme at the Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade, Port-of-Spain out on by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice, Ben­jamin called on both law en­force­ment and the pub­lic to stand up and join hands in the race to achieve peace.

Even though he was clad in the kha­ki suit syn­ony­mous with his of­fice, it was “Pas­tor Ben­jamin” who said, “There are times you recog­nise that if you are not in the right place at the right time, some­body could lose their life be­cause you are not at the right place at the right time.”

He stressed, “As po­lice of­fi­cers, we need to be at the right place at the right time, to solve some crime sit­u­a­tions.”

Ben­jamin ad­mit­ted, “If you are not in the right place at the right time, it can cause death.”

Re­call­ing when he got the call that his moth­er was dy­ing and his rush to get on the plane to get to her, he said, “By the time I got there, she was gone. Time ran out.”

Telling those present that time was the one thing you could not buy back, the top cop urged peo­ple to stop wast­ing it and, “Awake out of your slum­ber.”

Ad­mit­ting he had been a “pro­fes­sion­al sleep­er” even in church, Ben­jamin said, “It is time to wake up.”

“And when you wake up, it is when you come to a con­scious­ness, to un­der­stand that there is more to life than liv­ing, just as there is more to death than there is to dy­ing.”

The act­ing CoP claimed, “We are liv­ing in a time when every­body just wants to have a good time.”

Hav­ing giv­en his life to Je­sus at the age of 11, Ben­jamin tes­ti­fied, “I have ab­solute­ly no re­gret.”

“I have not been per­fect but I thank God, that the grace of God was able to keep me even when I was at my low­est, be­cause I recog­nised it is not me, be­cause when I be­come weak, he be­comes strong.”

Point­ing a fin­ger to the heav­ens, he de­clared, “His grace is suf­fi­cient for me.”

Ben­jamin’s ser­mon formed part of the col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­fort by all arms of law en­force­ment to en­cour­age the pub­lic to pray more.