Love has the power to disintegrate hatred

My husband and I have friends who, as a young couple completing a stint in the Peace Corps in the late 1960s, drove through the Middle East from India before returning to the United States. The country they thought most beautiful was Afghanistan.

Now the news is filled with desperate Afghanis fleeing the terror of the Taliban takeover. The beauty of the countryside doesn't matter when you're running for your life.

I discovered more tragedy in a beautiful place while traveling this week with visiting family to Ocean Shores, Washington. At Clear Creek Falls in White Pass, beside a trail that overlooks a wooded gorge where two stunning waterfalls cascade, stands an iron cross memorial. It is decorated with artificial flowers, bead necklace, and burned candle at its base.

The woman who died was only 36. The Spanish inscription on the cross translates, “Always in our hearts.” Someone — in plural — had loved her very much.

My first thought was she took her life — plunged into the gorge. It was so pretty there it didn't seem possible something so tragic could have happened in that place. Our daughter suggested she may have fallen — or even been pushed.

We were curious enough to look up the incident — a death at Clear Creek Falls in 2016. The Yakima paper had the story. It was worse than we had imagined. Her abusive husband had stabbed her to death, dragging her body to the highway and dumping it.

What a sorrow — whether occurring in Afghanistan or Wenatchee National Forest. The first book of the Bible records God calling to Cain regarding the murder of his brother, “What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood is crying out to Me from the ground.”

God created a beautiful world. It's puzzling why He gets the blame for what people choose to do of their own volition. Jesus makes a direct connection between hate and murder — saying in God's eyes the two aren't any different. The Taliban and the abusive husband are not a world apart. They are wrapped in the same skin.

My 10-year-old grandson and I were story imagining today — he told me about his idea for a sword that could disintegrate whatever living thing it touched. I said wouldn't it be great if we had a weapon to disintegrate rage and hate. Then I realized we do. It's called love.