Yesterday our community was robbed, robbed of our security, robbed of our comfort and robbed of our innocence. A child was taken from us and called to join the choir of angels. Taken from his parents in the early years of youth. Their hopes, plans, and expectations revoked in an instant. There is no way to prepare for the feelings of injustice, sadness, violation and heartbreak that this brings forth. Watching children learn first hand of the things adults can not explain, much less process. Knowing that the adults themselves now, have lost a security that they have taken for granted.
How do we deal? What do we do? Where do we turn? The questions fire around internally like a garden hose gone wild. Do we run to God? Yes... well maybe... is the the same God who just robbed us of our loved one? Do we open up and all cry together in love? or is that same love that just made us vulnerable to such profound hurt? Maybe withdrawing into a hardened shell will protect us from further pain. Where to go? What to do? How can we stop the feelings of hurt and violation with no answers.
The answers lie within. We know that love, the very love that makes us hurt so bad is the only thing powerful enough to even begin to repair the hole in our soul. The love that God blessed us with, the hope and promises He instilled in us. By a faith that there is in fact a heaven, we can find comfort in the fact that we can know our loved ones are in comfort, that we can maintain a hope of reconciliation.
The concept of love and heaven are not a doctrine of religion, as most major religions arrive at similar conclusions. It is a seed planted in our very core. Planted by the same creator that gave us a profound ability to love to the point of paralyzing pain. It is internal, hard wired into us. God who created us in His image, created us in love, and also promised us eternal life.
The answer to our healing, is to come together in love, to find comfort in the promise of a life eternal. to not run, hide, shut down, but to live each day with a new respect for the value of the gift it is. To love more, to give more grace, and to seek refuge in a God that willing gave His own son for our benefit.
It is the same God who entrusted us with the gift of our loved ones. Every day we get is a blessing. So we should not look with contempt at the time we did not receive, but live in gratitude for that which we did. The pain we feel is a testament to the true value of the gift we have received.
We can not pretend to understand the larger plans of the Lord. We can not pretend to understand the enormity of eternity from the basis our perspective of time. We need to have a faith, a blind faith in its infancy, but as you learn to trust in that faith, to live in that faith, it reveals itself. It becomes no longer blind, but in fact, it becomes a life based on a knowing, living, breathing relationship with a loving creator. It no longer becomes a leap of faith, but an investment in love.
Though not all are prone to becoming vulnerable enough to find the openness that allows for healing, I ask us all to open our hearts, to be available to ourselves, to one another, to God to allow us as individuals, and as a community to come together and openly grieve, to heal together and to celebrate the gift that we were given, for the precious time we had it.
"'For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,' declares the Lord. 'As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts'" (Is 55:8-9).
Yhea God!
Posts
