And one of the elders asked me, "Who are these dressed in white robes and where have they come from?" And I said to him, "My lord, you know." And he said to me, "These are the ones who are coming out of the great tribulation, and they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb." Rev. 7:13, 14.
God's end-time believers overcome by the suffering and victory of the Lamb rather than by armed resistance. Christ reveals His power more clearly through the broken than through the powerful and the talented. The humility of a Saint Francis advances His kingdom further than the temporal power of the popes who promoted the Crusades. A Christian faith that stands up for the weak and the powerless is far more effective than one that brandishes its wealth and political clout.
Some homeless teenagers, who grew up on the streets of Philadelphia, beat a young Korean to death. He was a Christian doing graduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania. At the time of the crime the victim had just mailed a letter to his family at home in Korea. The parents traveled to the United States for the trial and sat silently throughout. As the trial drew to a close, they asked for one opportunity to speak. The judge granted their request right after the reading of the guilty verdict and before the sentencing.
The parents approached the judge's bench, and the the stunned amazement of the audience, they knelt down before the judge. They begged the judge not to carry out the penalty he had in mind, but instead to release their son's murderers into their custody, so that they could give them the home and the care that they had never had.
"We are Christians," they explained to the judge, "and we want to show something of the grace that we have received from God to those boys." The ones who had done so much evil to them and their son would now be on the receiving end of a grace that only God could possibly inspire.
The judge, whom newspaper reporters claimed had a reputation for being hard and unemotional, had tears in his eyes when he said, "I'm so sorry, but that is not how our system of justice works!"
By their forgiveness, these parents offered a powerful testimony of a kingdom that is utterly different from those of our world. It is a kingdom whose system of justice is radically unlike the ones we know, but a kingdom open to anyone who dares to believe in its existence and in its radical solution to life's problems.
Lord, this example of forgiving grace deeply challenges me. Forgive my lack of forgiveness in far lesser situations. Transform my heart through the example of the Lamb.
God's end-time believers overcome by the suffering and victory of the Lamb rather than by armed resistance. Christ reveals His power more clearly through the broken than through the powerful and the talented. The humility of a Saint Francis advances His kingdom further than the temporal power of the popes who promoted the Crusades. A Christian faith that stands up for the weak and the powerless is far more effective than one that brandishes its wealth and political clout.
Some homeless teenagers, who grew up on the streets of Philadelphia, beat a young Korean to death. He was a Christian doing graduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania. At the time of the crime the victim had just mailed a letter to his family at home in Korea. The parents traveled to the United States for the trial and sat silently throughout. As the trial drew to a close, they asked for one opportunity to speak. The judge granted their request right after the reading of the guilty verdict and before the sentencing.
The parents approached the judge's bench, and the the stunned amazement of the audience, they knelt down before the judge. They begged the judge not to carry out the penalty he had in mind, but instead to release their son's murderers into their custody, so that they could give them the home and the care that they had never had.
"We are Christians," they explained to the judge, "and we want to show something of the grace that we have received from God to those boys." The ones who had done so much evil to them and their son would now be on the receiving end of a grace that only God could possibly inspire.
The judge, whom newspaper reporters claimed had a reputation for being hard and unemotional, had tears in his eyes when he said, "I'm so sorry, but that is not how our system of justice works!"
By their forgiveness, these parents offered a powerful testimony of a kingdom that is utterly different from those of our world. It is a kingdom whose system of justice is radically unlike the ones we know, but a kingdom open to anyone who dares to believe in its existence and in its radical solution to life's problems.
Lord, this example of forgiving grace deeply challenges me. Forgive my lack of forgiveness in far lesser situations. Transform my heart through the example of the Lamb.
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