Processing a moment in history.

Yesterday was a super long day for me. Between church, a youth luncheon, worship team stuff and a going away party for some dear friends who (like many people around us) are moving due to employment stuff, I wasn't able to sit down until about 8:30 last night. When I signed onto the internet I saw a ton of facebook statuses about bin Laden's death.

I was shocked and yelled for Sam and we rushed to the t.v. (which never comes on at night, so it was a treat for the kids to watch t.v., even if it was the news). As we were turning on the t.v. I commented, "You know, it's great that they finally got the man who masterminded 9/11, but I don't think we should be rejoicing. As far as we know, he wasn't a Christian, which means eternal punishment."

I just can't celebrate eternal punishment for anyone.

Was Osama bin Laden evil? YES. I am not sad that he was finally found. I'm not even sad that he had to be killed in order to be taken captive (as far as we know. Maybe that was the plan all along, but I rarely question military involvement because I know that we will never be given all of the information that they have, for people to sit there and say otherwise are incredibly naive...).

On the other hand, watching the t.v. and watching the President's speech I was thrilled and a little apprehensive. I'm thrilled that FINALLY this evil man was captured. He was not innocent at all. He masterminded an attack on our soil, killing thousands of people. He changed our history. He made it so that SO MANY families were affected. I wrote in my journal on that fateful day that I knew Sam's future was going to be changed by the events that took place on 9/11. So, while I was not thrilled that he was killed (because how much more justice would have been done if he had been captured and imprisoned and brought to justice that way, even though it probably would have led to death as well) I was thrilled that he is no longer out there.

As we sat with the boys watching the t.v. I explained as best I could what was going on. We have a book called, "The Man Who Walked Between the Towers" that we bought when we went to New York last year. I asked Nathaniel if he remembered that the towers were no longer there, and then explained that the man who they were talking about on t.v. was the man who made it so that those towers weren't there. Then we told them that they needed to remember this day if they possibly could. We'll see if that helps :).

Finally, we did our story reading and our family prayer time as usual. We prayed for bin Laden, as weird as that may sound. We prayed for God's mercy and that bin Laden was able to know God truly before he was killed. We don't ever want our kids to rejoice in the death of someone, no matter how evil. Especially if they did not know Jesus.

Disclaimer: I hope people who read this realize that we are not saying that his death was bad or not justified. It's just a loaded event. It's hard to process and hard to know how to process such a thing. While it's good that he's gone, I wonder if we've made him a martyr and I wonder what will happen next. But, no matter the outcome, he needed to be brought to justice for what he has done.