a friend tweeted this evening: i remember what i felt on september 11. i don’t feel any different today – just more sadness.
and i started thinking of grace. i started wondering where we got this notion of shaking our fists in the air and hollering about deserved judgment and celebrating eternal hell.
am i not as broken?
am i not as needy?
in my darkest and dirtiest moments am i not as desperate for Rescue?
absolutely.
and this is why i’m awake right now.
i get justice. i get someone paying for what they’ve done and punishment deserved. i understand the lives lost and the years spent and the sense of duty to country. i even understand the choice made – the hardened heart and the turning away from truth. i get it.
but what i don’t get is the gloating.
i mean, really? celebrating about fire and gnashing of teeth and total absence of love? really?
when it all comes down to Truth, there is a soul eternally separated from the King tonight. and something within me stirs because i know this is what i deserve – my sins are no better than his, my life no more holy.
and more than anything, i can’t get the message of genesis 30 i heard just hours ago out of my head. rachel and leah and jacob…all broken. all messy. all trying to do it on their own and all failing miserably. all of them coming to the realization that brokenness breeds dependence on the true King – and to cover cracks with supposed perfection is only bringing light to the dark places in our hearts.
and at the end of the day, i choose to believe that the only death that ever meant anything still rings true for redemption. the battle is HIS. judgment is HIS. eternity is HIS.
not mine.
God went for the jugular when he sent His own Son. He didn’t deal with the problem as something remote and unimportant. In His Son, Jesus, He personally took on the human condition, entered the disordered mess of struggling humanity in order to set it right once and for all. The law code, weakened as it always was by fractured human nature, could never have done that. The law always ended up being used as a Band-Aid on sin instead of a deep healing of it. – Romans 8:3
“and at the end of the day, i choose to believe that the only death that ever meant anything still rings true for redemption”
- Amen.
I posted on Facebook …” If we rejoice over the death of our enemy, we have not learned one thing from 9/11. Nor have we allowed suffering or sorrow to grow us as a nation.” Thank you for standing on grace.
Very well put. I was searching for the words last night when they showed the chanting and cheering and singing. Oddly enough, it reminded me of the shots of the chanting and cheering over the deaths on 9/11. I am glad his personal evil has been stopped, but I can’t “be glad” that he is dead. It seems to counter God’s love for the individual.
rachel, i thought the exact same thing. one of my facebook friends copied & pasted two pictures posted on top of each other – one of palestinians celebrating after 2001 & one of americans celebrating in 2011. it was eerily similar.
I was so tempted not to be on Twitter at all today because the only thing I expected to see was tweets about Bin Laden. I didn’t want to see/hear people’s misguided opinions and celebrating his death.
When the news came across I felt disbelief. It was in some ways as surreal as that morning was just over 9 1/2 years ago.
I was lying in bed last night and all I could think of was this is a man who was created in God’s image. God knit him in his mother’s womb and God had dreams that he would believe in Him. And this man died not knowing Jesus and I can guarantee that God’s heart wept over this lost soul.
You’re right. We **deserve** the justice Bin Laden received. Our only benefit is accepting the saving grace of God.
“God knit him in his mother’s womb and God had dreams that he would believe in Him.”
wow. friend. THIS is why i was so distraught. tragic {but hopeful} image. i heard a quote yesterday that was something along the lines of “if Christ didn’t die for my enemies, then who did he die for – me?” i took it to mean, if His blood isn’t enough for the darkest of humans, it’s not enough for me. powerful.
I had the same reaction, just somber. Some of his actions in life were reprehensible. But I could not bring myself to celebrate the death of one who had rejected Christ. This isn’t the end of a war. Just the end of a life. And that is sad.
Yes and yes. My own heart condemns me. The God of grace confounds me. Thank you for for your words.
Beautifully put.