Remember the Khmer Rouge?  In the mid-Seventies, led by Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge terrorized the nation of Cambodia as they sought to transform it into an agrarian Marxist state.  Their methods were brutal, harsh, and unforgiving:  murder, imprisonment, confiscation, and torture.  Photos from Tuol Sleng prison, the chief torture site (photos which the torturers systematically took of those on whom they would soon visit unspeakable pain) show unsmiling people with identification tags on their shirts.  If they arrived at Tuol Sleng without a shirt, the staff simply pinned the tag directly onto their skin.

     A couple of weeks ago, Kaing Guek Eav, otherwise known as Duch, who earned a reputation as the cruelest and prolific torturer at Tuol Sleng, died at the age of 77.  Few tears were shed.  According to news reports, however, some years prior to his death, Duch had converted to Christianity.  Therefore, according to nearly every Christian tradition, upon his death Duch would enter into the presence of God, redeemed and forgiven for all time.   

     Huh? one might ask.  It's a legitimate question.  After all, many of Duch's victims had not been given the same opportunity to believe in Jesus.  Why should he?

     One of the greatest puzzlements about being human is the confounding character of God's grace.  None of us asked to be in this world.  But all of us are.  What do we then do?  We can either live for the moments we have, however, few or many they may be, or we can live for the Moment in which all moments are incised and framed and given meaning.

     It's indeed a peculiar, astonishing, and remarkable and mysterious thing, this presence of God.