The Death House of Chungkai, Burma, was a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp during World War II. One evening, a Japanese guard announced that a shovel was missing. He shouldered his rifle, ready to kill one prisoner at a time until a confession was made.
A Scottish soldier said, “I did it,” and the officer beat the man to death. The prisoners picked up the man’s body and their tools and returned to camp. Only then were the shovels recounted. The Japanese soldier had made a mistake. No shovel was missing after all.
Christ lived the life we could not live and he took the punishment we could not take to offer a hope we cannot resist. If he so loved us, can we not love each other?
