More Reflections 2

Although I understand an anger that retaliates against injustice - that returns evil for evil - it so violates my sensibilities. I'm the one who constantly struggles with the dictator part of benevolent dictator and that's just working with my dogs. But dogs and children need correction. Grown ups need to hear the truth. There's a time for everything under heaven yet Jesus told Peter that he who takes up the sword will die that way.

I'm not a theologian but here's where my tangential thinking went ...When we suffer and wrestle we relate more intimately with the Psalms and those life questions that have no easy answers. We identify a little more with the profound emotional experiences we read in the Psalms - experiences that David and Messiah shared. The Psalms are full of emotion some joy, some much darker. I think that often the power of the emotions being expressed by the psalmists are lost on us, as Christians.

When you find yourself immersed and sinking deeper into the dark mud of tragedy, despair, betrayal or when you find yourself not outraged by horrific injustice but numbed by it, you understand a tiny bit more, you catch a tiny glimmer of Jesus on the cross and its impact. When you recognize Christ Jesus sharing your grief [or more appropriately you have the privilege of sharing His grief] in places you can't even describe the only thing you can do is fall on your face and worship Him. You may never tell a living soul because you can't articulate where you were or how He was there with you but you know He was. You may never understand why He let something happen but you know He was holding you, grieving with you, lifting you out of a deep dark hole, taking your hands and encouraging you to keep walking even though the experience left you crippled.

A new thought for me, another tangent: Jesus was resurrected but He still carried the scars of His crucifixion. Was it just to convince Thomas that He was who He said He was? In the New Testament, Christ's forgiveness had, and still has, the profound and supernatural power to heal even the crippled, even the demon-possessed. They left His presence changed and healed and whole.

Jesus asked God to forgive those who beat and killed and betrayed Him. He would have been perfectly justified to seek revenge - an eye for an eye. God not only forgave and healed, He raised Jesus from the death inflicted on Him, the death He chose. I never thought about the fact that even with a whole new resurrection body He kept the scars. It was the scars that identified Him as Messiah.