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When my daughter, Lily, was 2 years old she started watching Star Wars with me and latched onto the story and characters way more than a 2 year old probably should. She could tell you the entire plot of each movie. In an effort to get her to eat dinner, my dad would play Star Wars trivia with her. The theme for her 3rd and 4th birthday parties was Star Wars. She was into it.

By far her favorite movie at the time was Revenge of the Sith. If you aren’t familiar with the franchise, let me fill you in. This is the 3rd movie of the prequel trilogy that came out around the turn of the century.  

**Spoiler Alert- If you haven’t seen Revenge of the Sith, I am about to spoil it because none of this will make any sense if I don’t. However, it is a 20 year old movie, so I don’t feel that bad about spoiling it.**

The entire prequel trilogy builds up to the climatic scene in this movie where Anakin Skywalker turns to the dark side and ultimately turns into Darth Vader. Anakin had been viewed as the savior for the good guys to beat the bad guys. So it was quite a dramatic turn of events, especially for a 2 year old. Lily just could not understand why a seemingly “good” person would choose to turn into a “bad” person.

Fast forward to 3 weeks ago. My wife, Jill, and I visited Washington DC and while we were there we toured Ford’s Theater. When we got home and the kids asked us what our favorite part of the trip was we both said visiting Ford’s Theater which sparked some obvious questions from our 7 and 4 year olds. If you don’t know, I love history. Specifically US History, especially anything to do with Presidents. And if I had to narrow down the specific events in US History that I have enjoyed learning about the most and spent the most time learning more about, it would oddly be Presidential assassinations. I know, it’s weird - but try telling that to middle school Jacob who at all times had a book about the Lincoln or Kennedy assassinations in my backpack.  

So, when asked about Ford’s Theater, again, and I can’t stress this enough, by my 7 and 4 year old, I admittedly went into more detail then needed.  

**Spoiler Alert- If you don’t already know what happened on Good Friday, April 14th, 1865 at Ford’s Theater, I am about to spoil it for you. However, it has been 160 years, so I don’t feel bad at all about spoiling it.**

On April 14th, 1865, Abraham Lincoln, his wife Mary Todd Lincoln, Major Henry Rathbone and his fiance, Clara Harris attended a performance of “Our American Cousin” at Ford’s Theater. Keep in mind we are merely 5 days past the end of the Civil War. After a failed plot to kidnap Abraham Lincoln, a southern sympathizer, John Wilkes Booth and some of his friends have developed a plan to assassinate Abraham Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William Seward. Booth, an actor and familiar face at Ford’s Theater, snuck into the box Lincoln was watching the show from and shot him in the back of the head. He jumped down from the box to the stage, breaking his leg in the process, and ultimately escaped out the back and was able to elude capture for 12 days thanks to help from his co-conspirators.  

After sharing that story with my kids, Jonah, my 4 year old, latched on to John WIlkes Booth’s story. If you ask him, he can tell you all about him. He has watched the opening 4 minutes of National Treasure 2 about 10 times in the last week because he loves watching him jump from the box down to the stage.  

Sure, the moral of these stories could easily be that I’ve made questionable parenting choices.  But what I hope you get out of these stories instead is that even as very young people, we all have a sense of right and wrong. We all have this sense that there is some order to the universe that should be followed - and to a toddler, when that order is not followed, it’s glaringly obvious to the point that you might obsess over it because it just doesn’t make sense to you.

As believers, we know that this sense of order Lily and Jonah felt was corrupted by Anakin and John Wilkes Booth, is not a random sense of order, but an order established by our creator, who designed everything and created it all to work together in harmony. We know the story of Adam and Eve in the garden well, God dwelt among them and everything was good.  But then sin entered the world and that order was messed up. We’ve been dealing with the consequences ever since.  

As adults, we are likely not quite as alarmed as Lily and Jonah when we encounter this lack of order on a day to day basis. You could easily make the argument that we should be and that being desensitized to the lack of order around us caused by sin is a real problem and you are probably right, but I want to look at our response to this lack of order rather than sit back in my chair and point out all the sin in the world I can think of.

Let’s back up for just a second, after the fall of man when we sinned and messed up the order God created, we read story after story in the bible of God bringing His people back to Him. The climax of this story is found in the Gospels when God sends His son, Jesus, as a gift to us. A gift that will take our place on the cross and die the death that we deserve to die in our place. The only sacrifice suitable to do so. In doing this, God showed us grace, a gift we don’t deserve.  

Later on in Acts, Saul, a persecutor of Chrisitans encounters Jesus on the road to Damascus.  You’d think Saul was about to get what was coming for him in this encounter, instead, Jesus offers mercy, not getting what you deserve. Paul goes on to be one of if not the most influential leader in the 1st century church and lead the effort to bring the Gentiles into the church.  

We have an innate desire to see justice done in the world. From early in life, before your earliest memory, you likely saw order broken and wanted it to be “fixed”. So what do we do about it?  Well, as people created in the image of God, maybe we should look to how God and Jesus responded with grace and mercy, not condoning the behavior, but not shaming or seeking self gratifying justice in the moment either.  

Think about it, everything we have is a gift. None of us have led a life worthy or deserving of any of the things we have. But God gives anyway.

I am not great at showing the kind of mercy and grace I’ve been given. Not to compare myself to Anakin Skywalker or John Wilkes Booth, but I think they would say the same thing. When we seek to impose the kind of Justice that makes us feel better about ourselves or our situation, we find ourselves in the same place as them. God has shown time and time again that He is just, but He is not selfish and He does not shame us for our faults.  

In God’s Economy of Order, justice is found through showing grace and mercy.  God’s plan to restore order and bring His people back to Him revolved around Jesus.

I hope that is top of mind as we go through the next 2 weeks leading up to Easter. God gave us the best gift we could ever get, Jesus. He died for us so we could be in a relationship with God.  He is making right what we made wrong. He is restoring order.