Mail Archive of the old Santa Clara Valley Lutheran Parish

I adjure you by the Lord that this letter be read to all the brethren. (Thessalonians 5:27)
Subject: January 13 devotion
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 2010 23:57:57 -0800 (PST)
From: David Bonde <pastorbonde@gmail.com>
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Date: Tue, 12 Jan 2010 23:57:57 -0800 (PST)
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Subject: January 13 devotion
From: David Bonde <pastorbonde@gmail.com>
To: SCVLP <scvlp@googlegroups.com>
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Out of the depths I cry to thee, O Lord!
   Lord, hear my voice
Let thy ears be attentive
   to the voice of my supplication.

I received a telephone call from the Sangamon County District
Attorney=92s office Monday morning.  A woman with a wonderfully kind and
tender voice called to let me know that Brandon Hurst is set to be
released from Taylorville Correctional Center on February 3rd.

Sangamon County is the location of Springfield Illinois.  Brandon
Hurst is the young man who struck and killed my daughter and her
friends while driving under the influence.

We never escape our past.  When I heard the message on the answering
machine from Sangamon County it took me a couple hours before I was
ready to return that phone call.  There are rooms inside us we do not
like to go, boxes of memories we would rather not open.

Nothing terrifies me more than the word of Jesus that everything will
be revealed.  This is my image of the great judgment: for one moment
we will see the truth of our lives in all its stark and naked truth.
No patina of self-deception.  No selective memory.  No kind forgetting
of moments for which we are or should justly be ashamed.  Just one
stunning moment of truth.  Heaven save us.

When I spoke to this Diane I asked her if she knew anything about what
awaited Brandon.  Where would he go?  What would he do?  Was there
anyone to take him in?  Or do they just open the gate and dump him on
the doorstep?

It matters to me.  I cannot shake the thought of the burden he bears
with the lives of five young people on his hands (Anna, Sally and
Christopher who were killed; Nathan and Nick who =93survived=94 in lives
forever changed) as well as the lives of all who knew and loved them =96
and those who would never know and love them.  I cannot shake it
because it is my own burden raised an infinite degree.  If I cannot
shake the memory of ordinary brokenness and failure, if my mind
rehearses my mistakes as I lie in bed, how will he face the silent
darkness or stand in the light of morning?

We cannot make our sins right.  We can apologize.  We can make amends.
We can try to do it better next time.  We can seek to change.  But we
cannot sweep them away.  We cannot dismiss them.  They are there in
the record even when not in memory.  And they wait for moments of
weariness and weakness to pounce upon us anew, their boney finger,
like Nathan=92s, declaring =93You are the man.=94

If thou, O Lord, shouldst mark iniquities,
   O Lord, who could stand.
But there is forgiveness with thee,
   that thou mayest be feared.

What love is this so great that it dissolves our terrible moment of
final truth into the warmth of pure light=92s embrace? And how else can
we talk about it than with words like death and life? And with what
other emotions than awe, terror and desperate hope?  We are in truth
survivors clinging to a raft at sea.

I wait for the Lord, my soul waits,
   and in his word I hope;
my soul waits for the Lord
   more than watchmen for the morning,
   more than watchmen for the morning.

Faith is nothing more than clinging to a promise.  And there in the
water we find life=92s simple calling =96 share the raft.

O Israel, hope in the Lord!
   For with the Lord there is steadfast love,
   and with him is plenteous redemption,
And he will redeem Israel
   from all his iniquities.  --Psalm 130
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