Surprising Forgiveness

I stumbled across this article on another blog today. It's fascinating how the media is fumbling all over itself to try and explain what seems to be an incomprehensible response to an incomprehensible crime.

This is of course tied to the horrific crime in Pennsylvania, where a troubled man summarily executed a number of young girls at an Amish school.

Instead of the expected cries of revenge, or the usual political grandstanding, the members of this Amish community attended the funeral of the man who committed this crime, to mourn him and most of all forgive him.

In the aftermath of such an appalling crime, the media is dumbfounded by this sense of forgiveness. Yet the Amish remind us something profound about our faith, that Jesus was one of love and forgiveness. Expressing God's unconditional love. Most of the time, we see this as purely a divine trait, that only God can have, which allows us room for our own cries for vengeance, even inside the Christian faith. Yet as the Amish community in Pennsylvania have shown us, it is entirely possible for us as human beings to reflect that sense of forgiveness. That we can really live out that sense of forgiveness that Jesus embodied.

The Amish make it look so easy... maybe its something we need to learn again.