MERCY

I have been thinking the past few days about fogivness, love, pain, and mercy.
If any of you had paid any attention to the news then you might have heard the name Josh Powell, or his wife, Susan Cox Powell.
You can go here and read about what has happened over the past 24-48 hrs...and the past two years. It started out as a tragic story two years ago with a missing wife, and has gotten so much worse since then. And now it seems to come to an end, it least for the 3 people who know what really happened that day when Susan went missing.
Since Sunday night when all of this happened there have been a lot of facebook posts and news reports and comments made about how terrible and horrible a man Josh must be, and that now it is even more believable that he was the one to murder his wife, etc, because of his actions towards his sons. He has been called so many names...more than what I care to put here on my blog. People have written that there is a special corner in hell with his name on it. And there might be. Who knows. We are not his judge. We are not God.
I wrote a comment on someones facebook post today saying that is was unthinkable what he did to his children, then I wrote, "may God have mercy on his soul". And I really did mean that. In this situation no one has won. Susan is gone as are her sons, and I do hope that they are together right now. It least the boys will have their mother. And as for Josh...well, he wanted a way out, thinking that it would be better this way, and it's not. Not for him, for his family, for Susan's family, for the boys, their family friends, and for people who don't know them, but who have followed this story for two years.
I pulled up the topical guide for my scriptures and looked up the word mercy and this is what came up: Compassion, Forfiveness, Justice of God, Mercy of God, Grace, Kindness, and Love. In the February 2012 issue of the Ensign Magazine on pg 11 there is a quote from Pres. Dieter F. Uchtdorf and it says referring to the love our Heavely Father has for us:
"He loves us because He is filled with an infinite measure of holy, pure, and indescibable love. We are importatn to God not because of our resume' but because we are His children. He loves every one of us, even those who are flawed, rejected, awkward, sorrowful, or broken. God's love is so great that He loves even the proud, the selfish, the arrogant, and the wicked. What this means is that, regardless of our current state, there is hope for us. No matter our distress, no matter our sorrow, no matter our mistakes, our infinitely compassionate Heavenly Father desires that we draw near to Him so that He can draw near to us."
Now, let me be very clear here...in no way at all am I justifying what Josh Powell may or may not have done to his wife, and what he did do to his children. It is horrible and unthinkable. My heart aches for all those involved in this sad story. Last night when I read what their father did to those boys before they died I began to cry. My heart aches for the granparents, aunts, uncles, etc. And my heart aches for Josh's family too. They will all live their lives with the sorrow and loss that they have.
However, my heart is also saddened for Josh as well. The guilt that he might have been feeling is more than a person can bear. He obviously wasn't living a life that would leave his heart open to feel the spirit or the love of the savior. He was not at a place in his life where he could feel or understand the atonement. To me that is the sad part in all of this. He made choices in his life and he will now pay the consequences for those choices. That too is part of the love and mercy that the Lord has for each one of us. I have no doubt that our Father in Heaven loves Josh Powell, and his heart is aching because of the choices that he made while in this life. That is pain that only a Father can feel.