known as Billy the Kid as we read last week on this blog.
He was born November 23, 1859 as William Henry McCarty and took on the alias William Bonney and became later known as Billy the Kid due to his youth. During his short life this young man is credited with the killing of eight men and numerous escapades of theft, including cattle rustling.
Only 22 years later, young Billy was sentenced to hang for his murderous exploits and after escaping jail was killed by Sheriff Pat Garrett on July 14, 1881.
His deceptive personality was charming one moment and violent the next which confused those he traveled with into not knowing which Billy they would have from one moment to the next.
I took a trip last weekend and spent some time with dead people.
border into New Mexico. Reading the plaques mounted on crumbling brick brings pictures to mind of all the people who walked through the doorways and the events that transpired under the roofs of the now ancient wooden beams supporting the antique structures.
One such building in Mesilla, New Mexico housed the courtroom where Billy the Kid was tried and sentenced to hang. He escaped the jail cell he was held in and that sentence was never carried out. He did, however, meet his demise when Pat Garrett later shot him. This young man was only 22 years old, and in that short lifespan he had made a reputation of lawlessness and murder.
Concordia Cemetery in El Paso is the burial place of over 60,000 people. Some were famous outlaws and murderers whose crime spree covered decades and left destruction in their wake. One of these was John Wesley Hardin, the man who is remembered for killing more people than any other gunslinger in the West. It is reported he once shot a man for snoring too loudly.
The true nature of God is love, not judgment.
Valentine's Day. These are physical reminders of affectionate feelings for another person. But after the day is over, do we revert back to old ways and forget the loving things said and done because of a special holiday?
Our tokens of love are emotional. Feelings aren't wrong, but we can't depend on them to guide our lives. Sometimes we don't feel like being loving, we would rather be grumpy or rude. But real love does the action without the feeling.
The true nature of God is unconditional love, not judgment. He loved us while we were still dirty, rotten sinners (Romans 5:8). He showed the one and only kind of real love when he gave Jesus to us as a gift wrapped in a little baby to grow into the man who would have all the foul sin of the world placed upon him. He placed the judgment of His wrath upon His own Son so it wouldn't fall upon us.
That was action, not emotion.
Our works don't bring us into a relationship with God. Faith does that. Receiving grace does that (Ephesians 8-9). But to bring someone else into that grace requires showing them the love of the Father. And that is where the action comes in. When we don't retaliate against someone who has mistreated us we are reflecting the true nature of God because that is what He did for us. He doesn't give us evil when we display evil. He empties Himself and pours out a love we can not experience through human emotion.
The valentine of heaven wasn't a card sent through an angelic mailbox. It was blood running down a wooden cross to soak into the cursed earth. One drop would have been enough, but he used it all to show us He goes over and beyond and does much more than we need. He paid the highest cost and we were given the freest gift.