justice and grace

sunday night, mike & i were watching the news, when across the tube came a story about a man who had found an infant in an suv inside a garage he shared with his duplex cohorts.

when he opened the car door, the stench of urine and feces made him buckle to his knees. he immediately called 9-1-1, and paramedics determined that the baby had not eaten or been out of the clothes basket it was found in for at least two or three days.

my husband and i looked at each other, not giving voice to words of anger, doubts, the sense of injustice welling on our tongues.

today, when i got the news e-mail alert (yes, certfied news junkie here) that the 23-year-old mother in the 'abandoned baby' case had been arrested - mommy and daddy went away for the weekend and decided to leave the infant in his car. i clicked on the link to read more and the link under that story has had me furious and haunted ever since.

a dad tried to sell his five-year old on craigslist - and worse, a million times worse: a. mom. was. arrested. for. murdering. her. one. month. old. daughter. by. putting. her. in. the. MICROWAVE!

seriously. from Dayton (the mom took the child to the hospital where sarah used to work). here is the link: http://www.newsnet5.com/home-backup/10411941/detail.html.

what in the hell is wrong with people? seriously... i cannot imagine anything more purely evil, more heinous, than murdering your own child.

give your child to me. i'll take it. purple, green, black, white, healthy, sick, one month old, 15-years-old - i don't care. drop him or her on my doorstep. and i know i'm not the only person who feels like that.

i think most days anyway (remember how gray I am... or see previous post - "sometimes") that i am pretty positive i am a dyed-in-the-wool-'feminist-for-life'-anti-capital-punishment-pacifist. killing is wrong - even if it's someone who deserves death because according to the Word, we are all sinners deserving of death and Jesus loved us enough to die in our place. and Jesus died even for the mom who killed her own baby with the microwave. i know that in my head, and i believe it in my heart, i guess even when push comes to shove. we are not supposed to kill the very people Jesus calls us to love simply because Jesus loves them. there is more to life than to what is here now... and we cannot take into our hands what is not ours to take. i believe that it is God's role only to take life.

and yet... and yet we must live by the laws that govern our society, and face the consequences for doing otherwise.

we are supposed to love them... . we must bring them to justice... . Jesus loves them... . our God is Justice.... Jesus is Grace.

and i... well, me and my gray old brain will just have to keep questioning that which has no answer.