Wednesday, August 01, 2012

THIS MATTER OF WANTING REVENGE

Yad Vashem is Israel’s stark memorial to the six million Jews lost in the Holocaust.  One of the exhibits is entitled, “Spots of Light: To Be a Woman in the Holocaust”.  Within this presentation is a feature film where various women talk about how they survived horrific prison camps.

Testimonies are coupled with narratives of heart stopping and breathtaking stories of unthinkable suffering.  One woman spoke of her torturous days and nights by stating, “We all wanted revenge, and we learned that the best revenge against suffering was to try to develop a spiritual life.”

The best way to revenge is to ponder the spiritual.

And how would that look?

To be spiritual is to contemplate truths that are beyond the visible; they are spirit.  Look at Jesus dying on the cross.  Initially, this appears as raw defeat.  Factually, it was the path to one of the most drastic truths of all time; the resurrection.  If there is no burial, there is no resurrection.

In this case one can begin to ponder that the spiritual transforms the flesh life.  Now what this means for us is that suffering—as with the Holocaust—is not a weapon of defeat; but rather a stepping stone to victory.

If you want revenge, learn to believe that God delivers through the very concepts we do our best to avoid.  The way Jesus won was to lose….his life…so that he could perfect his amazing mission of human rescue.

Want revenge?  Begin to believe what can become.  God gave His only Son that through suffering we might experience new hope.  God’s revenge was to operate from the glory of the Spirit-ual.  Therefore, suffering will not shake our confidence for through the resurrected Jesus, we have already won!

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