Grace and peace to you and through you …
Things indescribable…
Imagine joyfully expecting a baby.
The dreaming, the planning, the preparing…
Filled with an excitement that overrides any pregnant discomfort. The screaming and gasping-for-air-baby is like music to your ears. Indescribable joy!
Then imagine your baby going missing from the hospital crib. Missing. Stolen! Gone without a trace. Indescribable terror and trauma.
Imagine living every day with the absence of your baby ever present. Imagine imagining your missing baby growing up … from toddler to teenager. Indescribable torture.
Then imagine years later your baby is found, now a young adult. Indescribable joy.
Imagine meeting the one who stole your baby-now-a-young-adult. Indescribable anger. A fair exchange for the indescribable hurt.
Imagine the desire to punish. To teach the thief a lesson. To send out a clear message to all that this crime is not without consequence.
Imagine now believing that you are going to be the family that you always dreamed of being. Indescribable hope.
But…
Though you missed your baby every second of every day … your baby did not miss you.Your baby did not miss you because your baby did not know to miss you. Your baby is not to blame. It feels as if your baby were taken away from you again. Indescribable pain.
Imagine that the one you call baby-thief is the one your baby innocently calls mom. Indescribable wrong. Though your baby is not to blame.
Imagine knowing that there is no reset button. That today’s justice is powerless to restore the past. To lock away the thief of your baby does not return your baby to you. Indescribable irony.
Imagine in seeking justice, you end up doing to your baby the very thing that was done to you. You steal from your baby the one she loves. Indescribable predicament.
Oh please can’t you imagine another way?
Another way that does not deny the anger and hurt and wrong, and yet at the same time a way that is not determined by the anger and hurt and wrong. Another way that does not pass the pain on. A way that surpasses the limits of the law.
A way of indescribable grace.
Imagining Grace,
Alan
PS: Read 1 Kings 3:16-28
