One Too Many
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I’m not sure if it is age, the time of year, the weather, or just the way life goes, but I am reminded of something that Billy Graham is quoted as saying years ago. I am paraphrasing, and you can try to Google it to verify my words, but he said that ‘life at its best is full of sadness.’
That’s a very sober and somber thought. Maybe in the sleep deprived state that I find myself in these days - and, as I’m sure, you who are reading this find yourselves in, for different reasons - maybe I am just more sensitive to some of the ills and misfortunes that I hear about.
Take, for instance, the tragic end to the life of fifteen month old Lucca Romano on Sunday night at the Pearson airport. The boy and his family were actually on the way to Argentina to have Lucca baptized. Now they are making funeral arrangements for him. This is one of the worst griefs a person must bear because it is for a lifetime; a lifetime for the family to recover from, a lifetime that has been lost with Lucca’s death.
I have also heard about young married men and women suffering unexpected strokes, heart attacks, experiencing debilitating circumstances. My wife recently told me of her efforts to reach a colleague of her’s who she hadn’t connected with in a few years only to find that he passed away over fourteen months ago.
If we need any true evidence that we live in a fallen world, we don’t necessarily have to gawk at all the crime or injustice that is taking place. All we have to consider is the amount of good people who die young, or even the pain and separation that death and disease brings, the sudden and unappreciated shift in life that personal calamity visits upon human beings.
In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve didn’t know anything of this. We are not sure how long they lived in this state of utopia as the Bible is not necessarily clear if it was days, months, weeks, or years before they touched the forbidden fruit. But we do know that they entered a world which was the way God intended it to be: free of disease, sin, and full of life and love.
But we are not in a world like that. The world we are in requires effort, struggle, passion, and the determination to fight through often chaotic and even horrific realities that present themselves before us.
I am the father of a two year old son and a seven year old daughter. I don’t know how I would be if either of their lives were snuffed out as suddenly and as tragically as Lucca’s was. The closest person that I have ever lost was my grandmother, who lived to be ninety - one, and could be said to having died at a ‘ripe old age.’ You couldn’t look back on her life, especially the length of it, and say that she was taken necessarily too soon.
But when a baby dies, when a toddler is crippled, or when a married man in the prime of his life is struck down leaving a young family behind, it’s a lot to take.
The good news is that we never go through these things alone. God, through His Son Jesus, has promised us that He would always be with us in every situation, thick or thin. As a matter of fact, Jesus even said “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted” (Matthew 5:4) and the Bible identifies the part of the Holy Spirit as our Comforter during trying times (John 14:16, King James Version).
In our hearts, the death of any of the categories of people I have mentioned in this article is be one too many. But those of us who remain behind can help one another by praying for the Comforter to come and give the grieving and the hurt the strength they need to see light in another sunrise.
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