Kethuvim

I heard on the news this morning that a mother in San Francisco chucked her kids off of a pier and into SanFrancisco bay. Not only did she have the nerve (or whatever the freak it is that makes someone do this) to do it, she did it in front of people.

This raises a number of questions for me. How do you get to the point in your life where you would do something like that? What circumstances contributed to this action? What went through her head in the moments leading up to it? Where is God in all of this? What does he think when he sees something like this happening? How does he keep himself from vaporizing her into billions of particles for killing her children? Finally, how far does his grace extend?

Here in lies the greatest mystery of God. He is a God of judgment and a God of love. Are the scales really balanced? Does his love trump his judgment, or does his judgment trump his love. Who knows if the woman will even ask for forgiveness for what she has done. God is a great paradox, it seems that he is full of contradictions at times. I guess my thoughts extend from the fact that I want a nice, predictable God who dances when I play the fiddle, and always acts in the same way. To be a being who is both judgment and mercy, wrath and love, seems incongruous to me, but maybe that's why I follow God. Maybe deep down in the recesses of my heart, I need this adventurous Deity who is wild and seemingly erratic. Maybe that's what draws me to him.

Whatever he is thinking right now about this woman, I am sure that he loves her, although his heart breaks for her and her children. This Sunday, this family will be on the prayer lists of many churches and I'm guessing only a handful of churches will pray for the mother. Join me now in praying this prayer for this mother, who in a moment of senselessness, killed her children.

Almighty and Everlasting Father, we pray now for this woman in San Francisco who desperately needs you. Her actions, Lord, are both despicable and disgusting, and yet she is your creation, who needs an invasion of your Holy Spirit. There will be those, Father, who will call for her immediate death, but we pray for her life. May your grace cover her and release her from the power of the Enemy, and may you give her life, even in the midst of the tremendous guilt she now lives with, in the name of your Son, Jesus, Amen.