Seven Years On
September 13, 2008
(For a version of this devotion that is easier to print, follow this link.)
This week marks seven years. Seven years since the towers fell. Seven years since terrorists hijacked four planes, aiming to kill tens of thousands of innocent people. Seven years since they succeeded in killing almost 3,000. Seven years.
In God’s providence, the Bible reading plan I developed eight years ago schedules for the 11th reading in September Jeremiah 39 and 52 – the accounts of the terrible destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 586 BC. In the following days I read the Psalms that look back on that event – Psalms 74, 79, and 94 – as well as the book of Lamentations. On September 11, 2001, I read of Jerusalem’s fall without much feeling in the morning; that evening, knowing of the attack and the destruction of the towers, I reread the account, and continued to read these psalms and Lamentations – and wept.
Today, much of our visceral reaction to that attack has faded from memory. Newspapers this year used more ink talking about lipstick on pit bulls and pigs than they devoted to remembering 9/11.
But we must remember. We must remember.
What must we remember? Read more
Tony Snow, Death and Life
July 12, 2008
Tony Snow died of colon cancer this morning at the age of 53. He is best known as President Bush’s former Press Secretary.
But Tony and I first met 35 years ago, when were freshmen at Davidson College. We both loved philosophy, and had several courses together. Tony was a voracious reader, a quick thinker, and a prolific writer. Full of energy, full of ideas, adventurous in spirit, he clearly had an interesting life ahead of him. I took a year off between our junior and senior years, going to Kenya to teach secondary school. That year changed my life, as I focused for the next two decades on issues of economic development, spending several years overseas. Tony corresponded with me while I was in Kenya, and, intrigued, decided to go himself the next year. He taught at the same school. Read more
Genocide and Forgiveness
April 11, 2008
Fourteen years ago, the genocide in Rwanda was at its height. See this link for a fascinating account – in the New York Times of all places – of the impact of the Gospel on reconciliation and forgiveness between perpetrators and relatives of victims. Here’s an excerpt: Words spoken by Jean Baptiste Ntakirutimana to the man who murdered his mother:
By the time he started explaining how he killed her I partly lost consciousness. I prayed to God to give me His spirit to revive me and give me more strength to continue, as I felt it was His mission I was on. Miraculously I felt warmth from my head to my feet, I felt like a big rock melting from my chest and my head. I felt very refreshed, cleaned up my tears and carried on the conversation tremendously relieved from my whole being. I then told him that I have personally been forgiven all my wrong from God and that it is in the same spirit that I was coming to him offering him pardon myself. Then it was like a huge veil off his face he started smiling with a lot of words of gratitude. He started holding my hands and telling me many other things I couldn’t expect about himself and the reality around the genocide. He agreed to go and see other people for whose family members he killed.”
Thanks be to God for His inexpressible gift!
