The full weight of justice

From my tumblr archives (x):

So I woke up today at 4pm PDT with a text from a friend who knows I'm night shift warning me that my twitter feed would be crazy tonight, that there had been bombings in Boston, and there was a lot of confusion/misinformation throughout the day, and people were still trying to figure out what happened/why.

Which immediately sent me into a brief moment of panic because I knew my sister was somewhere in the Boston area right now for work, but I wasn't quite sure where. Luckily I got text responses very quickly from my parents and her assuring me she was fine. She's actually about an hour outside of Boston right now.

Once I was able to move past the "is my family safe" and take in the rest of the information.... well, it's kind of sad when I think "oh, only two people are dead, okay, that's not so bad", but it's true, that was my thought. And it's absolutely true that while this shocks us in America, because we think things like this shouldn't happen here, this is a *daily* concern and worry in many other countries even as I type this.

I got online, I read a brief overview article of what has happened, what we do know, what we still don't know. And then I ran across a quote from Obama...

"Any responsible individuals, any responsible groups, will feel the full weight of justice"

And all I could think is what an empty promise that is. We don't know, we don't know that we'll know who is responsible, that we can really bring them to justice. We say nice things like this after tragedy to try and bring hope and peace and assurance to families and victims and those angered and upset. But we don't know. After 9/11.... have we brought the weight of justice to all those responsible? Isn't that attitude even why we're in wars that so many wish we weren't? And yet, after tragedy, we still promise the same thing over and over...

So reading that, for a moment I just got so tired, so weary of human responses to tragedy. Because it holds no weight. Obama can't promise us Justice.

But then I remembered, I remembered that I do have not only hope, but assurance of Justice. I get to cry out for Justice, and I know, I KNOW that I will get it.

Our God is a Just God. He cries out for justice with me, he looks on tragedy and he is also angered, he is also mourning. He looks at all the hurt and brokenness in the world, and he isn't unmoved.
It matters so much to him, he is so moved by it... that he sent Jesus to die on a cross to redeem it, to redeem us.

The cross is so beautiful, is so marvelous, is so scandalous because mercy and justice meet. God says I am Just and sin can NOT win, brokenness and evil will not win, and punishment must be exacted, and he laid all of that on Christ.

God's mercy is great, God's mercy is wonderful. But sometimes we don't want mercy, do we? We WANT Justice. We want people who have done bad things to get what is coming to them, we want Good to Win. We want bad people to get bad things and good people to get good things. (of course, there is no clear line between good and bad people but that's another story).

The gospel is that we don't have to choose. We don't have to let go of our need to see justice in this world just because we are embracing the overwhelming mercy and grace of God in our own lives.
We don't have to choose. Because the cross means Justice and Mercy. The cross means that both exist in perfect unity. The cross means that our God loves Justice. And he loves Mercy. And we get them both.

I'm sharing this because I think in times like this, sometimes it is nice to have the reminder that this too shall be made right. Everything will be made right.

We get justice.

We get to be angry.

Our God is also angry.

He's so angry that he made it his own personal problem.

That's powerful. That's the gospel. And I will never stop being in love with it.