Suicide Bombings and Compassion

Tuesday March 11, 2008:
At 9:30 in the morning, two powerful explosions rocked the city of Lahore, Pakistan. The twin suicide bombings have left 31 people dead and more than a hundred wounded. According to the BBC, more than 600 people have died in Pakistan within one year as a result of suicide bombings. I wrote the following entry in my journal in January which I think is relevant to the situation.

January 18th , 2008
I came to know today that yesterday, Mr. Sajjid Williams a Pakistani Christian working for a relief and development agency in Peshawar has been murdered. Unknown gunmen opened fire as he was leaving his place of work and left him dead on the street. The news has shocked me to say the least. Sajjid was a strong believer and extremely active in ministry in his area. He leaves behind a wife and an 18 month old daughter.
All this happened just moments before a suicide bomber (a teenager) blows himself up, killing twelve people worshiping in a Shiite Mosque in the same city of Peshawar. These are times of great turmoil in our country, enflamed by the war against terrorists in North Waziristan and political unrest in the country. The current rate of suicide bombings in our country is at least one every two weeks.
As I though about this great tragedy in utter grief wondering why God had allowed such a thing to happen, a strange thought struck me: Why had the death of this one believer in Christ (whom I personally knew) filled me with more grief and sorrow than the death of the twelve unbelievers in the mosque, or the 20 policeman killed in similar incident in Lahore a few days ago, or the 130 people killed in Karachi on 27 December (a suicide bomber blows himself up in an pre-election rally) or the dozens of people killed in the violence following the assassination of our former prime minister? I thought to myself: shouldn’t we as Christians be more concerned about the death of thousands of people dying around us every minute, who never knew Christ (and will spend eternity in hell) rather than the death of a believer goes to rest at His father’s House?
I don’t think Jesus wept for Lazarus at that graveyard in Bethany. I think he wept for all the other people in graves there. I think he cried, out of compassion for all those souls lost to sin. And Jesus Wept. As one writer puts it, Jesus wept as he saw what sin had done to man, what sin was doing to man and what sin would do to man, all in an instant.
I ask myself, Do I weep for the lost souls out there? Am I concerned about them or do I pray for them? Or am I just concerned about my brothers and sisters in Christ. Does it strike me that Jesus died for all humanity? That He had every human being, dead or alive, in his mind as he hung on that cross, and was willing to pay for each one of them with His own blood? Does it require a bomb blast to get my attention, to get me on my knees? To be burdened with love and compassion for these people?
I was Just wondering….

The Hound of Heaven

The Hound of Heaven
by Francis Thompson

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.

Up vistaed hopes I sped;
And shot, precipitated,

Adown Titanic glooms of chasmèd fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.

But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbèd pace,

Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,

They beat -- and a voice beat
More instant than the Feet --

"All things betray thee, who betrayest Me."

I pleaded, outlaw-wise,

By many a hearted casement, curtained red,
Trellised with intertwining charities;
(For, though I knew His love Who followèd,

Yet was I sore adread

Lest, having Him, I must have naught beside.)
But, if one little casement parted wide,
The gust of his approach would clash it to :
Fear wist not to evade, as Love wist to pursue.
Across the margent of the world I fled,
And troubled the gold gateways of the stars,
Smiting for shelter on their clangèd bars ;

Fretted to dulcet jars

And silvern chatter the pale ports o' the moon.
I said to Dawn : Be sudden -- to Eve : Be soon ;
With thy young skiey blossoms heap me over

From this tremendous Lover--

Float thy vague veil about me, lest He see !
I tempted all His servitors, but to find
My own betrayal in their constancy,
In faith to Him their fickleness to me,
Their traitorous trueness, and their loyal deceit.
To all swift things for swiftness did I sue ;
Clung to the whistling mane of every wind.

But whether they swept, smoothly fleet,
The long savannahs of the blue ;

Or whether, Thunder-driven,

They clanged his chariot 'thwart a heaven,

Plashy with flying lightnings round the spurn o' their feet :--
Fear wist not to evade as Love wist to pursue.

Still with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbèd pace,

Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,

Came on the following Feet,
And a Voice above their beat--

"Naught shelters thee, who wilt not shelter Me."

I sought no more that after which I strayed,

In face of man or maid ;

But still within the little children's eyes

Seems something, something that replies,

They at least are for me, surely for me !
I turned me to them very wistfully ;
But just as their young eyes grew sudden fair

With dawning answers there,

Their angel plucked them from me by the hair.
"Come then, ye other children, Nature's -- share
With me" (said I) "your delicate fellowship ;

Let me greet you lip to lip,
Let me twine with you caresses,

Wantoning

With our Lady-Mother's vagrant tresses,

Banqueting

With her in her wind-walled palace,
Underneath her azured daïs,
Quaffing, as your taintless way is,

From a chalice

Lucent-weeping out of the dayspring."

So it was done :

I in their delicate fellowship was one --
Drew the bolt of Nature's secrecies.

I knew all the swift importings
On the wilful face of skies ;
I knew how the clouds arise
Spumèd of the wild sea-snortings ;

All that's born or dies

Rose and drooped with ; made them shapers

Of mine own moods, or wailful or divine ;

With them joyed and was bereaven.
I was heavy with the even,
When she lit her glimmering tapers
Round the day's dead sanctities.
I laughed in the morning's eyes.

I triumphed and I saddened with all weather,

Heaven and I wept together,

And its sweet tears were salt with mortal mine ;
Against the red throb of its sunset-heart

I laid my own to beat,
And share commingling heat ;

But not by that, by that, was eased my human smart.
In vain my tears were wet on Heaven's grey cheek.
For ah ! we know not what each other says,

These things and I ; in sound I speak--

Their sound is but their stir, they speak by silences.
Nature, poor stepdame, cannot slake my drouth ;

Let her, if she would owe me,

Drop yon blue bosom-veil of sky, and show me

The breasts o' her tenderness ;

Never did any milk of hers once bless

My thirsting mouth.
Nigh and nigh draws the chase,
With unperturbèd pace,

Deliberate speed, majestic instancy ;

And past those noisèd Feet
A Voice comes yet more fleet --

"Lo ! naught contents thee, who content'st not Me."

Naked I wait thy Love's uplifted stroke !
My harness piece by piece Thou hast hewn from me,

And smitten me to my knee ;

I am defenceless utterly.
I slept, methinks, and woke,

And, slowly gazing, find me stripped in sleep.
In the rash lustihead of my young powers,

I shook the pillaring hours

And pulled my life upon me ; grimed with smears,
I stand amid the dust o' the mounded years --
My mangled youth lies dead beneath the heap.
My days have crackled and gone up in smoke,
Have puffed and burst as sun-starts on a stream.

Yea, faileth now even dream

The dreamer, and the lute the lutanist ;
Even the linked fantasies, in whose blossomy twist
I swung the earth a trinket at my wrist,
Are yielding ; cords of all too weak account
For earth with heavy griefs so overplussed.

Ah ! is Thy love indeed

A weed, albeit an amaranthine weed,
Suffering no flowers except its own to mount ?

Ah ! must --
Designer infinite !--

Ah ! must Thou char the wood ere Thou canst limn with it ?
My freshness spent its wavering shower i' the dust ;
And now my heart is as a broken fount,
Wherein tear-drippings stagnate, spilt down ever

From the dank thoughts that shiver

Upon the sighful branches of my mind.

Such is ; what is to be ?

The pulp so bitter, how shall taste the rind ?
I dimly guess what Time in mists confounds ;
Yet ever and anon a trumpet sounds
From the hid battlements of Eternity ;
Those shaken mists a space unsettle, then
Round the half-glimpsed turrets slowly wash again.

But not ere him who summoneth
I first have seen, enwound

With glooming robes purpureal, cypress-crowned ;
His name I know, and what his trumpet saith.
Whether man's heart or life it be which yields

Thee harvest, must Thy harvest-fields
Be dunged with rotten death ?

Now of that long pursuit
Comes on at hand the bruit ;

That Voice is round me like a bursting sea :

"And is thy earth so marred,
Shattered in shard on shard ?

Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest me !
"Strange, piteous, futile thing !

Wherefore should any set thee love apart ?
Seeing none but I makes much of naught" (He said),
"And human love needs human meriting :

How hast thou merited --

Of all man's clotted clay the dingiest clot ?

Alack, thou knowest not

How little worthy of any love thou art !
Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee,

Save Me, save only Me ?

All which I took from thee I did but take,

Not for thy harms,

But just that thou might'st seek it in My arms.

All which thy child's mistake

Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home :

Rise, clasp My hand, and come !"
Halts by me that footfall :
Is my gloom, after all,

Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly ?

"Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,
I am He Whom thou seekest !

Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest me."