The bombing in Bosting

By Now you have heard or read thousands of word and seen countless replays and commentaries on the bombings in Boston this week. Yet with all of those words, the one word we have read and heard most often is the word "Tragedy". I'm sure that each of us as Americans has the greatest sympathy and pain in our hearts for those involved in this tragic event, I know our house has sorrowed for them and prayed for them.

The word "tragedy" simply means "a disastrous event"; how disastrous depends upon which side of the tragedy you are on!

These bombings were a tragedy in several ways. First, to those who were killed and injured. Almost nothing can affect our lives more than the death of one we love or our own injury or the injury of one we love. It has the ability to take away dreams for the future if we allow it. It sometimes hardens our hearts and fills them with a sense of hate or despair. For those of us who did not have someone we knew personally killed or injured in the bombings it can instill anger and outrage against the ones who did these terrible things.

Secondly, it is a tragedy that someone thought so little of the lives of innocent people to plan and carry out such a horrific attack. It is the sign of a mind that is sick and twisted with sin. Satan has been extremely successful it causing hate in the heart of the ones who planted those bombs and I'm afraid he is successful in getting hate to rise in the hearts of many of God's people. I readily admit that I have no sympathy for the ones who brought about this terrible attack. I desire justice to be rendered upon them to the full extent of our laws!

That of course is the human side of me speaking. I demand justice for others, those who steal, rob, car jack, sell drugs, murder, injure others or any number of other things which break our laws or the laws of God. At the same time I tend to avoid thinking of all of the times that I break God's Law. I depend upon His Grace rather than justice.

The other side of me, the side that tries to be more like God, remembers a murderer by the name of Paul that God chose to use. This man turned his life around and became one of the greatest teachers and evangelist in Christian history. He wrote of God's purpose and his life in 1 Timothy 1:15 where he said: "This is a trustworthy saying, and everyone should accept it: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners and I am the worst of them all".

At times I really don't know which side of me is the strongest. Maybe it's like the old parable that says, "the side that wins is the side you feed". How about you, which side are  you feeding?

Russ Lawson