In 2002, I was in Jakarta, Indonesia,  to teach a 2-night Bible conference. The first night, I went early to the host church, and the pastor asked if he could show me around the building. It was impressive in its beauty.

Then the pastor took me to the lower assembly hall. At the front of the hall was a pulpit and a communion table. Behind it was a plain concrete wall on which hung a wooden cross. Below it were some words in the national language of Indonesia. I asked him what the inscription said, and he surprised me by quoting Christ’s words from the cross: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.”

I asked if it was there for a particular reason, and he said that several years earlier there had been serious rioting in the city, and 21 churches were burned to the ground in one day. That wall was all that remained of their former facility—the first of the churches to be torched.

The wall and the verse formed a reminder of the compassion of Christ which He showed on the cross, and that became the church’s message to their city. Revenge and bitterness will never be healing responses to the hatred and rage of a lost world. But the compassion of Christ is, just as it was 2,000 years ago.  — Bill Crowder