God's Grace In Action

Here is a news article in which one can discern God's Grace in action:

Accuser, Exonerated Man Are Friends
AOL
posted: 6 DAYS 13 HOURS AGOcomments: 1213filed under: Law News, National NewsPrintShareText SizeAAA

(March 9) - When Jennifer Thompson identified Ronald Cotton as her rapist in 1984, she was sure she had found the right man. But she was wrong.
Cotton, then 22, was convicted of raping Thompson and another woman on the same night in Burlington, N.C. He would spend the next 11 years behind bars for a crime he didn't commit.

In 1995, DNA evidence cleared Cotton of the rapes and showed that another man who was in prison with him was the rapist, a case recently covered by CBS' '60 Minutes'. Now, Thompson and Cotton are friends and have written a new book together on their story, called 'Picking Cotton.'
The two speak on the phone weekly and travel together to speak out on the problems with eyewitness evidence. Even their families are friends.

Thompson said she felt horrible guilt when she found out Cotton was not her rapist. "Suffocating, debilitating shame," she told Lesley Stahl in a CBS '60 Minutes' interview that aired Sunday. She asked Cotton if she could meet with him at a local church.

"I started to cry immediately. And I looked at him, and I said, 'Ron, if I spent every second of every minute of every hour for the rest of my life telling you how sorry I am, it wouldn't come close to how my heart feels. I'm so sorry.' And Ronald just leaned down, he took my hands…and he looked at me, he said, 'I forgive you,'" Thompson told CBS.
"I told her, I said, 'Jennifer, I forgive you. I don't want you to look over your shoulder. I just want us to be happy and move on in life,'"Cotton said.
There have been 233 people exonerated by DNA evidence across the country, and more than 75 percent of them have been convicted at least in part because of faulty eyewitness testimony, Stahl reported.

See video at: CBS 60 Minutes or AOL.

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2009-03-09 15:02:59

Prosecutor Says Church Killings Suspect Shows No Remorse

Shooting Suspect Allegedly Confesses
By DORIE TURNER, AP
posted: 3 HOURS 33 MINUTES AGOcomments: 93filed under: Crime News, National News

MONROE, Ga. (Nov. 26) - A man accused of gunning down his estranged wife and a man in a New Jersey church told authorities Tuesday in a videotaped confession that he would've killed everyone in the building if he'd had a machine gun, a Georgia prosecutor said.
Joseph Pallipurath, 27, admitted to Sunday's shooting rampage, which also seriously wounded a third person, hours after he surrendered peacefully at a Georgia motel, Walton County Assistant District Attorney Eric Crawford said.

"He was very emotional and very animated during the course of the interview," Crawford said. "The impression I got was he was waiting to talk to somebody and tell his side of the story."
Pallipurath told authorities he believed church members were blocking his attempts to contact his wife, who had left him three months ago, Crawford said. The prosecutor added that Pallipurath didn't apologize or express remorse for the shootings.
He was arrested late Monday in Monroe, about 40 miles east of Atlanta, after a motel clerk recognized his face from a photograph. During a court appearance Tuesday, he wore a blue jumpsuit and answered only "yes" and "no" when the judge asked him about his charges and extradition process. Pallipurath, who had no attorney, agreed to return to New Jersey.
The Sacramento, Calif., man is charged with shooting and killing his wife, 24-year-old Reshma James, inside the St. Thomas Syrian Orthodox Knanaya Church in Clifton, a suburb about 15 miles west of Manhattan. Prosecutors said James had previously taken out a restraining order against Pallipurath.
Also killed was Dennis John Mallosseril, who maintained the church's Web site. Witnesses said he tried to intervene.

Based on Pallipurath's statement to Georgia authorities, police in Clifton found his green Jeep parked in a public lot several blocks from the church, Clifton Detective Capt. Robert Rowan said. Inside the vehicle were a revolver believed to be the one used in the shootings and an automatic handgun with several clips of ammunition, Rowan said.
After learning from Georgia authorities about Pallipurath's comments regarding what he would have done with a higher-powered weapon, Rowan said: "I thought, 'It's lucky that we didn't have a mass murder on our hands.'"
The parish priest, the Rev. Thomas Abraham, said church members were thankful for Pallipurath's capture. At the church Tuesday, workers replaced bloodstained carpet where the shootings occurred.
"It's a big relief because of the fear factor," he said. "If he was still in the area, you never know if he might come back."
Police believe Pallipurath took a taxi to Manhattan and caught a bus from there to Georgia, where he has relatives, Rowan said.

Pallipurath is charged in New Jersey with the two homicides, one attempted homicide plus aggravated assault and weapons charges, Passaic County Prosecutor James Avigliano said. Georgia authorities said they would arrange his return to New Jersey within the next 10 days.
The prosecutor also gave new details Tuesday morning about Pallipurath's path leading up to the slayings.
Pallipurath's wife had come to New Jersey to stay with her cousin three months ago to escape what relatives said was an abusive marriage to Pallipurath. The couple was married just over a year ago in India and moved to Sacramento in January.
For about two weeks before Sunday, Pallipurath stayed with an unidentified couple in Paterson, only a few miles from the church. Avigliano didn't provide details about the couple, a man and a woman, but said it did not appear that they were related to him.
The couple was questioned but were not charged in connection with the shootings.
Associated Press Writer David Porter in Newark, N.J., contributed to this report.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. Active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.
2008-11-26 03:30:48

We should still pray for all those involved as God's Grace extends to all.

Karl Barth On Grace

The Incomprehensibility of Grace
Posted on October 9, 2008 by Halden

“Grace is the incomprehensible fact that God is well pleased with a man, and that a man can rejoice in God. Only when grace is recognized to be incomprehensible is it grace. Grace exists, therefore, only where the Resurrection is reflected. Grace is the gift of Christ, who exposes the gulf which separates God and man, and, by exposing it, bridges it. . . . Where the grace of God is, the very existence of the world and the very existence of God become a question and a hope with which and for which men must wrestle. For we are not now concerned with the propaganda of a conviction or with its imposition on others; grace means bearing witness to the faithfulness of God which a man has encountered and recognized, and which requires a corresponding fidelity towards God. The fidelity of a man to the faithfulness of God–the faith, that is, which accepts grace–is itself the demand for obedience and itself demands obedience from others. Hence the demand is a call which enlightens and rouses to action; it carries with it mission, beside which no other mission is possible. For the name of Him in whom the two worlds meet and are separated must be honoured, and for this mission grace provides full authority, since men are shattered by it.”

– Karl Barth, Epistle to the Romans 6th Edition. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), 31.

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Flaws Of Communism And Capitalism

The flaw of communism is that it places the individual in dependence on a welfare state instead of a radical dependence on God's Grace.

The flaw of capitalism is that it places an individual's faith in greed and a dependence on a free-market economy instead of a radical dependence on God's Grace.