La Vie Lola

God of creation There at the start Before the beginning of time With no point of reference You spoke to the dark And fleshed out the wonder of light

And as You speak A hundred billion galaxies are born In the vapor of Your breath the planets form If the stars were made to worship so will I I can see Your heart in everything You've made Every burning star A signal fire of grace If creation sings Your praises so will I

God of Your promise You don't speak in vain No syllable empty or void For once You have spoken All nature and science Follow the sound of Your voice

And as You speak A hundred billion creatures catch Your breath Evolving in pursuit of what You said If it all reveals Your nature so will I I can see Your heart in everything You say Every painted sky A canvas of Your grace If creation still obeys You so will I So will I So will I

If the stars were made to worship so will I If the mountains bow in reverence so will I If the oceans roar Your greatness so will I For if everything exists to lift You high so will I If the wind goes where You send it so will I If the rocks cry out in silence so will I If the sum of all our praises still falls shy Then we'll sing again a hundred billion times

God of salvation You chased down my heart Through all of my failure and pride On a hill You created The light of the world Abandoned in darkness to die

And as You speak A hundred billion failures disappear Where You lost Your life so I could find it here If You left the grave behind You so will I I can see Your heart in everything You've done Every part designed in a work of art called love If You gladly chose surrender so will I I can see Your heart Eight billion different ways Every precious one A child You died to save If You gave Your life to love them so will I

From Tim Keller’s The Wedding Party: 

“The problem, actually, is that we are all capable of [doing terrible things]. Adolf Eichmann was one of the Nazi architects of the Holocaust who escaped after World War II to South America, where he was caught in 1960 and taken back to Israel for a trial. He was tried, found guilty, and executed. But there was a very interesting incident during the trial. They had to find witnesses who saw him commit the terrible crimes against humanity he was charged with. They needed to find people who saw him participate in atrocities at the death camps. 

One of the material witnesses was a man named Yehiel De-Nur and when he came in to testify, he saw Eichmann in the glass booth and immediately broke down, falling to the ground and sobbing. There was pandemonium. The judge was hammering to get order. It was very dramatic. 

Sometime later De-Nur was interviewed by Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes. Wallace showed De-Nur the tape of him falling down and asked him why it happened. Was he overwhelmed by painful memories? Or with hatred? De-Nur said no–and then said something that probably shocked Wallace and should shock almost all secular Western people. He said that he was overcome by the realization that Eichmann was not some demon but an ordinary human being. “I was afraid about myself...I saw that I am capable to do this...exactly like he.” 

Look, you can choose to say the Nazis were subhuman, that they were nothing like us, and that we are not capable of doing what they did. But there are serious problems with that view. The scariest thing about that whole chapter of history is not the few individual evil architects of it but the complicity of vast numbers of people across a society that has produced so much of the world’s best scholarship, science, and culture....Besides that, to call the Nazis “subhuman” is in fact the very reasoning that led the Nazis into their unthinkable atrocities. They too thought that certain classes of people were subhuman and beneath them. Are you prepared to deny our common humanity with them?... 

"Americans understandably chafe at the ingratitude of a world that freeloads on the economic, diplomatic and military might of the United States. But Americans themselves also enjoy the exorbitant privilege of operating in a system that, broadly, suits them."