In the Desert

I wasn’t sure where I was that night, only that our patrol was stranded somewhere in Afghanistan’s high desert.

Our mission had been to help a remote village plan for its first election. That changed when the lead vehicle in the convoy was hit with a roadside bomb on the trip back to our FOB (Forward Operating Base). We lost two good men, SSG Craig Cherry and SGT Bobby Beasley, as well as Ajamal, our 20 year old interpreter in the massive blast. The bomb was actually two mines designed to blow up tanks, stacked one on top of the other and then buried in the road. It was detonated by a cell phone that was activated by someone watching us.

Our dead and wounded were evacuated by helicopter within an hour and we were left to wait until a truck and heavy equipment could arrive to remove what was left of the HUMVEE. Our men spent the day going house to house in a nearby village, rounding up possible suspects. One would be coming back with us.

As night began to fall I gathered our soldiers and held an impromptu memorial service for the friends we had lost, spent some time just talking with our men, and then we made our plans to spend the night in the desert.

There actually wasn’t much preparation involved other than finding a soft spot in the sand. As I stretched out in the darkness, using my body armor as a pillow, I was amazed by the beauty of the night sky. The Milky Way was resplendent as I had never seen it before. Stars, planets and galaxies gave us a dazzling display of beauty and light. Every few minutes a meteor would burn itself out with a dramatic streak of light.

I was also struck by the surreal contrast. On my left, not fifty yards away stood the charred and twisted remains of our vehicle, while above me the sky was ablaze with glory. There was man’s work – death, chaos and destruction. And there was God’s work with its beauty, symmetry and light.

It was then I thought that if you look closely, the same contrast surrounds us every day. Man’s work versus God’s work. We see it when law competes with grace. We see injustice chosen over justice. Men choose depravity and reject holiness. And yet how many understand this distinction and realize how much we lose when we do things our way? To be honest, I think there are very few.

Does it surprise you that the murderer who planted the bomb was acting out a religion of “good works?” It shouldn’t. The Bible clearly teaches, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.” (Proverbs 14:12) Throughout history, ever since Cain murdered his brother, man centered, works based religion has been the excuse for much of the violence in this world. It’s popular today to claim that it must be a spirit of religious intolerance or divisiveness that leads to violence. The Bible, however, teaches that the cause is a little more basic. The problem is within us, our own depravity, which is why man centered religion produces a result similar to man centered atheism: murder.

If the problem is within us, the solution must come from outside ourselves. It’s only when God’s grace produces a new creation that we can escape our tendencies. It’s only when our faith is God’s work that we can become the light of the world.