"Regards from President Bush"
Yesterday morning I and the rest of America woke up to the remarkable news of Saddam Hussein's capture. As President Bush told the world, a "dark era" for Iraq is over.
There is much we don't know yet, of course. We don't know what Hussein knows, or what he will tell us. We don't know how quickly his capture will cause a lessening of terrorist activity in Iraq and around the world. We don't know how he will face trial, or what his eventual end will be. But we do know this: one of the most despicable tyrants of the last century is finally in the custody of justice. We have all awakened to a different world than the one in which we lived last Friday.
This is the Advent week of peace. As President Bush and others have made clear, peace is not just the absence of conflict but the presence of righteousness. To be truly at peace, we must have harmony and justice with ourselves, with others, and with God. Otherwise, we have only the appearance of peace. Its reality eludes us.
Billy Graham said it best: "Christ alone gives lasting peace-peace with God, peace among men and nations, peace within our hearts." Only when we are right with the Father can we be right with his children and with ourselves. If we refuse to live in the word and will of the Creator, we cannot have peace with his creation. We will instead seek to be our own God, dictator of our own lives. And the result will be disaster.
No man illustrates more fully the "will to power" run amok than Hussein. This morning's news is reporting that when our soldiers found the former dictator he said, "I am the president of Iraq." Not, "I was the president of Iraq," but "I am." Living in a "spider hole" eight feet below ground, he still saw himself as the dictator of his nation. This morning's newspapers picture a disheveled, straggly-bearded man, in appearance more a vagrant than a dictator. But a man who thought he was still master of his own fate.
It's easy for me to live in the same deception. To believe that I am at peace merely because I am in control of my immediate surroundings, my own "spider hole." As I write these words from my study, I am master of all I survey. My desk, books, papers, files, and laptop all obey my bidding. The universe I can see is mine to rule. There is a sort of peace within these walls.
But unless I am right with God and with you, I cannot be right with myself. And one day my soul will be required of me. One day I will stand before One greater than myself; being at peace with Him will be all that matters. When Hussein told the soldiers, "I am the president of Iraq," they replied, "Regards from President Bush." Amen. |
