Tonight's news reveals that the second Boston Marathon Bomber has been captured alive. Residents in the area immediately surrounding the capture site cheer the officers and emergency personnel who have brought a sad chapter to an end. People of Boston breathe more freely tonight, even though the carnage of Monday hasn't changed, and there will be an exhaustive investigation as to how these two young men could possibly gain anything by killing some people and injuring hundreds of others.
Through the course of these last four days we have heard a certain resolve from the people of Boston and from an entire country. Unlike some other tragedies, this one galvanized the will of a people. More than once I have read or heard people say that forces of evil will not win.
They cannot win.
A few years ago I traveled in Israel for ten days with Shimshon, an Israeli who carried shrapnel in his body from a suicide bomber twenty years ago. He happened to be on a bus when the bomber performed his deadly act. Some on the bus died. Shimshon survived and vowed that, to his dying breath, he would fight those forces of evil.
The bomber failed miserably in his attempt to frighten a people into submission. Conversely, it caused one man to step up to the plate in a new way. Metal fragments cause him pain from time to time, but they also motivate him to tell the truth as he knows it to anyone who will listen.
Evil did not win in Jerusalem that day. Evil did not win in Boston on Monday. Instead, the forces of good come together to defeat evil. Oh, evil will win a battle from time to time, but it will not win the war. That war has already been won in Christ whose wounds are those of victory.
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