Bright beginning

I was told there would be a “bonfire” and I was conducted to the place of burning.

There I saw telephone-pole-sized posts, holding up wooden pallets, like platforms, stacked high into the air. These “racks” were packed, every nook and cranny, with countless packages great and small, wrapped in plain, whitish paper neatly tied with simple string. I understood they were to be the fuel for the fire.

What a waste! I thought. Who would go to all this trouble?! What a stupid celebration!

People came, laying down their packages, leaving empty handed. I saw one frail, old man, bent down with years. He looked to be Japanese. He shuffled into the complex and carefully placed his package, almost prayerfully, among the many others on the pyre (as if it were an altar). Then, just as quietly, he shuffled away. I marked the spot where he laid it and dared to retrieve it after he was gone. I wanted to know what was in it. What had he left behind to be burned?

His package was neither big nor small, merely “average” in size. It was carefully wrapped and tied like the rest. I couldn’t read Japanese, but somehow knew that the writing thereon was his name, written with tears. I untied the string and carefully bent back the wrapper.

What I saw filled me with revulsion!

In this bundle were many letters, like the kind a serviceman might write to his family back home in time of war. On top were photographs. The first was a black-and-white image of a woman (or what was left of her). She was naked, impaled vertically on a long wooden spike, bound hand and foot with barbed wire. Unspeakable atrocities and agony etched her face. She was cruelly tortured before her merciless murder.

This man, I was given to know -- this frail, old, gentle-looking man -- had been her captor and tormenter. He had defiled her…before he killed her. This was his record! This package represented his sins! He gathered them together here and now, acknowledging every one, placing the greatest, the most heinous, on top, closest to heaven, where it would not escape God's view.

I now looked around in amazement, with new understanding. All of these packages! All of these burdens! They were the sins of world!

This wasn’t a celebration. It was a funeral! A mourning! A wake! A putting to death of all that was vile, filthy, cruel, and violent in the world! Here was murder, rape, villainy and evil of every kind, sorted and represented in simple packages, left behind by remorseful men and women, to be obliterated by fire.

To be purged.

To be purified.

And, perchance, to be forgiven.