Cocaine is so highly addictive and the impulse to feed the habit so strong that Max might possibly have ended up dead either from the drug itself (overdose or cumulative use) or from increasingly dangerous crime to pay for the hits, and maybe harmed someone else in the process. Sometimes arrests are a wake up call and the arrested person gets treatment and makes a change. Hopefully this will happen for Max while he was shoplifting and not armed robbing or worse.

It will do us all good to remember that by the grace of God we are what we are, and any of us can fall. Be the one who holds out the hand of fellowship rather than holding up the hand of shunning or mockery.