Why did God spare me?

Part of reserve drill was a PT test. During the course of standing around between sets the topic of lost friends came up. The man I was talking to told how one of his company mates was killed when an IED detonated near their up armored HMMWV. The vehicle wasn’t damaged, but the man was killed by the shock wave. He was about 30 feet from the center of the blast.
The IED that destroyed my Stryker in Afghanistan, a blast which rolled the 20-ton truck onto its side, was just four feet from me, directly under my station. Four feet above an 80 lb. bomb, and here I sit pondering why I am still alive while someone else 30 feet horizontally away from a 155 round is dead. The blast crushed my work station, and had I been sitting down, it would have crushed me. As far as I’m concerned, it is a miracle I am alive, for there is no logic or reason to war. “For He looked down from the height of His sanctuary; from heaven the Lord viewed the earth, to hear the groaning of the prisoner, to release those appointed to death...” (Psalm 102:19,20)
The ways of the Lord are a mystery to me, why He would spare the life of His enemy, while His young faithful servant is laid to rest. This brief wake-up call touched me for a few weeks, but I continued to do evil, to be an enemy of God for another four years. Survivor guilt is normal, they say. Do not dwell on it, they say. They say a lot of things, but they cannot answer the deeper questions. Why did God spare me?
God said, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” (Genesis 2:16,17) Man disobeyed, and death entered the world. The sentence continues to this day, sin leading unto death. Yes, because of my sin I deserve to die.
God spared me on 25 July, 2010, and my unit removed me from the battlefield due to genetic defects discovered while being checked out at the CSH. On 19 December, 2010, the same truck (well, new truck, same bumper number) hit another IED which blew the engine out of the vehicle, killed my driver, and wounded the other three men on the vehicle. My replacement took shrapnel across his chin. I am two inches taller than he, and likely would have taken that shrapnel to my throat. Again I ask, why did God spare me? I was His enemy.
During the night as I mulled over the first half of this essay, this thought came to me, “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8) God did more than just spare His enemy. He sent His son to die for me while I was still His enemy! Romans 5 continues in verses 9 through 11, “Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. And not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.”
Jesus, who knew no sin, took upon Himself my sin, and died the death I deserve to die so that He could reconcile me to God. When Christ died for us, most of those He died for were His enemies. In the combat zone, it was my fervent hope to kill my enemies. I longed for the chance to put my skills to the test and kill those who sought to kill me, and I reveled to see them die when others did get the chance. So to die for them did not even enter my mind. Yet God did the opposite. He sent His Son, and His Son willingly died for His enemies. He gives us a hope and future because He took our sins upon Himself. He bridged the gulf between God and us that sin emplaced, and made a way that we can come to God, and He did so for those who hated Him. Yes, how can I not wonder at this?