Injustice

Injustice    

Injustice and unfairness never hurt as much as when it happens to our
own children. My daughter, a lively, athletic, and intelligent, teenager
of fourteen and half, is involved in a after school ski program. While
she was up on the ski slopes her trendy red backpack was stolen from the
corner of the ski programs office.  

We scoured every inch of the parking lot hoping the thief would have
dropped her school books, history notes for an exam the next day, her
eyeglasses, and personal stuff. It was a futile search. I became angrier
with each bush I looked under. After all, she had worked her summer
mornings as a chambermaid at a bed and breakfast and used her savings to
buy this expensive North Face backpack. “How dare that person show a
complete lack of respect and take something that does not belong to
them! It is absolutely unfair! God, this is unfair! It’s not enough she
has to lose her mom to a premature death, that she suffers these
insults, as well.” My anger boiled.  

So two thousand years ago, the answer to a promise, made to a
disobedient and rebellious people, was born in a manger in the city of
Bethlehem. Wait a minute. That’s not the story, I want justice not
mercy. I want that thief chastised and punished, as well as people who
cheat on there taxes, presidents who lie, and people who throw lit
cigarettes out their car windows. I want them all punished. But God was
reminding me that I am in as much a need of a Savior as the thief with
the backpack.  

It was written by the prophet Isaiah, ” He [Jesus] was sent to bind up
the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to captives, and freedom to
prisoners; ” The cost of that freedom was the ultimate injustice. It
cost God His own Son. It gave us the ultimate freedom. The freedom to
forgive, to be merciful, and to love with the selfless compassion God
gives to all who ask because He is a giving God.

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