"The opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference." - Elie Wiesel

On my way to the airport this morning, I saw a poster for Empereor, an organization against poverty. What caught my eye was their slogan: "Mit Zorn und Zärtlichkeit an der Seite der Armen." A rough translation of this would be something like "Standing by the poor with wrath and with gentleness."

I love that contrast. If all an organization against poverty has to offer the poor is simply a gentle pat on the back and a bowl of soup, it's not really going to have much of a long term effect. It NEEDS a sense of wrath and anger against the injustice causing the poverty in order to make real changes that end up permanently making a difference.

I was struck by how that contrast is also a great description of God. It speaks to how God's anger and fury is an outworking not only of his righteousness, but also and especially of his love! For a long time I viewed God's wrath as simply stemming from his sense of justice - when something evil is done, God gets angry because it's evil, and God in his holiness hates evil. Don't get me wrong, this certainly is a part of it, but in addition to his holiness and righteousness another vital reason why God hates evil is that he loves us and therefore hates with a passion anything that endangers us or our relationship with him.

It was this wrath as an outworking of his love which drove him to the most loving and most wrathful action ever: the cross.