Love Wins?

The past months have been a roller coaster ride of life, love, and seeking to understand justice in the face of death. Pouring months into a business plan that purposes to bring life and hope to the marginalized and disenfranchised; life. While learning about the atrocities that have happened in South Africa, Rwanda, Ireland, the US; in the face of death. Death taunts, but life and love and grace are triumphant. Always. And in the midst of death's grasping for victory, love still wins!

The perpetrators are just as loved and covered in grace and sought out by the Father's heart?
This is a truth I have struggled with and been so convicted of these past months. Watching footage from the South African Amnesty Hearings of war crimes committed by police officers. Things so horrible it feels a crime to even hear them spoken aloud. And in those minutes, feeling the tug of righteous anger I've known; and all of a sudden a revelation of something new:

The love the Father has for His creation extends beyond every evil every produced by mankind; and He yearns for His child who is so enslaved to death.

What is this news?

The price Jesus paid was for the Hitlers, the lynchers, the mass-murderers as much as it was for me. Because they, too, are Children of the Most High. And their Daddy is calling them Home, into His embrace, His love, and His astounding Grace.
Oh Death, where is your sting? 

And with tears streaming down my face, as I feel the Father's heartache, His longing for His sons and daughters to come home I find, I want them to come home too. My brothers and sisters are lost, and my Daddy waits for them in heartache and great love, watching, waiting for them to return to His Love. And that is what I want for them to.
Oh Grace, what is this you've grown inside of me?

And how can they come home if they don't know of their brokenness and need for redemption? And who will tell them, if it is not me and my fellow princesses and princes who go and show them what is this Good News? Death; is dead! The grave is overcome! The time for hurting is past, the time for healing has come!
How far does love win?

And I wonder in hope and expectation, who will I meet when I get to heaven someday? How far does love go? beyond the grave? This great mystery, to me bring a hope that perhaps, someday, in the presence of the One who's love knows no end, I will see my brothers and sisters who are lost and have taken life standing side by side in communion with those they have oppressed. Oh what a day that would be! That death and his dealers would be cast into an empty place- because love has redeemed! What if when Jesus died, He paid for all of the sin of the world? Past, present, future. What if we get a chance as we cross from this realm into eternity, as we see the face of our Lover and our Friend, to chose Him still?
Oh what a sight that would be!

Because Justice, I think, is not seeing the oppressor, "get what's coming to him." Justice, perhaps, is seeing the oppressor and the oppressed standing on even grounds. The ending of violence, justified or not; perhaps this is the secret Justice longs to share.

And maybe I am a dreamer, but maybe I dream with the One who teaches me first to love.