Osama Bin Laden is Dead

When this news first flashed across my Twitter screen, I didn't believe it. When the news reporters interrupted regularly scheduled programming to make a special announcement, I still felt disbelief. As I waited, with much of the country/world, for President Obama to give the TRULY official announcement, I couldn't wrap my mind around it.

Since the words were finally spoken by "the leader of the Free World," I have been reeling with the EXTREMELY varied responses of people around the globe, specifically Christians. Some have rejoiced and exulted. Others have sorrowed at those who are rejoicing in death...even of an enemy.

I think my response is somewhere in between. My emotions have been assaulted to an extreme that is hard to describe.

I have felt relief.

I have experienced sorrow.

I have been sobered.

I have felt anger.

I have wanted to cry.

I have felt relief that a man who masterminded a cycle of terror that impacted both America as well as many countries in the Middle East is no longer able to rain agony in this way.

I have experienced sorrow for the innocent victims that have lost their lives in this war.

I have been sobered by the men & women in arms who have been willing to make the HARD decision that I, and others, merely dare to blog about.

I have felt anger at the way the world changed 10 years ago in our "free" nation. I can remember when I first heard the announcement over the radio on 9/11, it sounded like an accidental plane crash. Our senses have been heightened, and our awareness sharpened in these past 10 years. Terrorism wasn't even on our radar then....what a different world for the children of today in America!

I have wanted to cry for the injustice and unfairness in this world and that we live in a time/season/space/world where these hard decisions HAVE to be made.

I heard this statement made by Dietrich Bonhoeffer today, and I think it surmises the angst & resolve that I have felt upon hearing the news last night: {read his short bio at the end of my post}

"If as a pastor, I saw a drunken driver get behind the wheel of a car, knowing that he would soon race at very high speeds down the highway, is it enough for me to bury the victims that he might hit along the way or comfort the surviving relatives?

NO! It is more important for me to arrest the wheel out of the

hands of the drunken, by whatever means possible."

I hate conflict and fighting. I always have. As a child & teen, I can remember jumping in the middle of fights to make them stop. I always believe there MUST be a better way, but I also have come, sadly, to realize that sometimes, no matter how much I may long for resolution & peace, because of this sinful world that we live in, the pursuit of peace comes with a price, even though I know we will never truly SEE peace until the veil between this world and the next is torn open.

Another blogger signed off her post today with "Maranatha.....Come Lord Jesus." I think those words say it all.

The call to prayer in this season is SO strong, and in that I am convicted and challenged.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was one of the few church leaders who stood in courageous opposition to the Fuehrer and his policies.

Bonhoeffer was born in 1906, son of a professor of psychiatry and neurology at the University of Berlin. He was an outstanding student, and at the age of 25 became a lecturer in systematic theology at the same University. When Hitler came to power in 1933, Bonhoeffer became a leading spokesman for the Confessing Church, the center of Protestant resistance to the Nazis. He organized and for a time led the underground seminary of the Confessing Church. His book Life Together describes the life of the Christian community in that seminary, and his book The Cost of Discipleship attacks what he calls "cheap grace," meaning grace used as an excuse for moral laxity.

Bonhoeffer had been taught not to "resist the powers that be," but he came to believe that to do so was sometimes the right choice. In 1939 his brother-in-law introduced him to a group planning the overthrow of Hitler, and he made significant contributions to their work. (He was at this time an employee of the Military Intelligence Department.) He was arrested in April 1943 and imprisoned in Berlin. After the failure of the attempt on Hitler's life in April 1944, he was sent first to Buchenwald and then to Schoenberg Prison. His life was spared, because he had a relative who stood high in the government; but then this relative was himself implicated in anti-Nazi plots.

On Sunday 8 April 1945, he had just finished conducting a service of worship at Schoenberg, when two soldiers came in, saying, "Prisoner Bonhoeffer, make ready and come with us," the standard summons to a condemned prisoner. As he left, he said to another prisoner, "This is the end -- but for me, the beginning -- of life." He was hanged the next day, less than a week before the Allies reached the camp.

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