But concerning Israel he says, “All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and obstinate people.” – Romans 10:21

Today’s Scripture Reading (January 7, 2015): Romans 10

On March 30, 1981, John Hinkley Jr. attempted to assassinate the sitting President of the United States, Ronald Reagan. In the attack, Hinkley wounded a police officer, Thomas Delahanty, as well as Secret Service Agent Timothy McCarthy. He also wounded the President, but not directly. A bullet ricocheted off of the limousine hitting Reagan in the chest. However, Reagan recovered from his injuries. But there was one other man who was injured in the attack; Press Secretary James Brady. Brady suffered a serious head wound from a bullet from Hinkley’s gun. Originally, Brady was declared dead. However, after long hours on the operating table, the surgeon who had worked on Brady replied when he heard the news regarding the death of his that his patient that “No one told me and the patient.” Brady ended up living through his ordeal and became a vocal supporter for handgun control. The wound left Brady with slurred speech and partial paralysis, but Brady would slowly recover over the next 30 years. By the end of his life, Brady could walk and had recovered almost all of his cognitive and speech functions.

James Brady died on August 4, 2014, just a little more than three weeks before his 74^th birthday. And in a controversial move, his death was ruled a homicide. It was not that Brady had suffered another act of violence, but rather the determination was that Brady died of the injuries that had been inflicted on him by John Hinkley Jr. more than 33 years earlier. Hinckley had started a process that could not be stopped, even though it took 33 years for his death to take place, and even though Brady had recovered from most of the overt symptoms that he had suffered from following the attack. The ruling says that there is absolutely nothing that Brady could do stop his death from the gunshot wounds he had recieved in 1981 - all he could do was slow down the process.

Paul quotes the prophet Isaiah who looked down at Israel and saw a nation that was suffering from their wounds. But unlike Brady, there was something that they could do about their wounds, they just chose not to do them.  They were an obstinate people who wanted to follow their own will instead of God’s. And yet, God continued to hold out his arms to them – he was unrelenting in his efforts to save Israel and he refused to give up on them. In the case of Israel, it simply didn’t have to be this way. The condemnation and pain was all on their own shoulders. And Paul had been given the task of reminding Israel how they had been forewarned, protected, favored, and tolerated again and again in all manner of rebellions, and how, at last, it was not merely just for God to reject them, but it would have been an injustice on God's part not to have done so! Quickly, Israel (and the rest of the human race) seemed to be walking toward a point of no return.

Scholars have noted that this ends the section of condemnation in Romans. But God is still not willing to walk away. He has a plan of grace for all people. And Paul’s unveiling of God’s plan of grace starts in Romans 11.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Romans 11