The death penalty?  The recent execution by lethal injection of a convicted killer in Ohio has stirred no small amount of controversy.  All witness accounts indicate that the person executed, 53 year old Dennis McGuire, took nearly fifteen minutes to die, time filled, according to most witnesses, by McGuire choking, snorting, and gasping until he finally expired and was declared dead.  Predictably, death penalty proponents stated that because McGuire was given a sedative initially, such sounds did not indicate extreme pain or suffering, whereas death penalty opponents noted that even the sedative did not seem to prevent McGuire from experiencing what appeared to be intense pain.
     Either way, the outcome was the same:  McGuire is now dead.  As I read the debate between advocates and opponents of the death penalty, I kept wondering how those involved really viewed the now deceased person.  Did they believe he had been created in the image of God, a person therefore as worthwhile as they?  Did they believe in the adage, "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth"?  Did they believe in the state's supremacy?  Does anyone believe justice, earthly, divine, and otherwise, has really been done?
     So who's right?  Who has the truest word?  No one, really.  We tread on very thin ice when we assert that we and we alone speak for the word of God.  And justice, we should realize, is far bigger than anyone here can possibly think.
     As the prophet Isaiah records God saying, "My ways are not yours."  Indeed.  Death is a very complex thing.  Whether we take it or give it, we ought not to trivialize it.