In the middle of a frenetic two week schedule, I sit here on a plane thinking about death, eating a questionable snack, watching the landscape slide past the window.
In the hour before I boarded I heard the news. A friend has been killed in the shooting massacre at the Nairobi shopping mall. I feel speechless, with a churning emotion that I'm coming to know too well. I want to know the details of how he died, but for the moment I'm disconnected and all I know is a shot to the head. I want to talk it through, but I'm stuck on a plane, so I write. He was a larger than life person, visionary in outlook, compassionate, always choosing to see the glass half full rather than half empty. He could be very frustrating in the way he dismissed details as mere trivia to be easily dealt with, but he did this, I think, because he had a bigger perspective on life than many of us do. He saw possibilities in situations that others found hopeless. I think that if he knew he was about to die, even there he would have seen the positive … “I'm going to Jesus.” He loved Jesus, a love that filtered into all he did and said. He was not my very close friend - as in the closeness of those that frequent one's social circle - rather he was one of those friends that you know from childhood and with who you share a familiarity of experience and a common worldview. When your paths cross you pick up the conversation as if it was yesterday. I last spoke with him a few months ago as we unexpectedly met in an airport lounge, and we shared a conversation that ranged far and wide and deep. Now he's dead. Murdered by angry men fighting in the name of ideology, killing the unrelated innocent in retribution for not having their own way, like a temper tantrum child. And they leave a family in loss, leave friends to grieve. Or should I say, now he's alive. Alive with God, because that is what he and I believe. Right now he's experiencing a reality I can only dream about, and yearn for myself. The suffering in the death of a Christian is for those who are left behind. Its the loss of a relationship (for now) that enriched our lives. And if I'm totally honest, there's also a twinge of envy that he now knows the home I long for and have yet to experience. His death tells me again that I am a stranger living in an alien land. Every time I personally encounter someone's death it brings perspective to my life. I'm reminded again that my problems and challenges are only that, simply transient problems and challenges that in time will pass. This is not to trivialize them - they're real and present - but these difficulties pale in comparison with that one small step into eternity. So I raise my plastic cup of airplane fruit juice in celebration of him. In sincere thanks to God for a life well lived, for a homecoming well deserved, for a legacy that shows God's love to the poor and the lost, for a faithful husband, for a loving father. Here's to him, God is good.
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Why?
Probably the best therapy is to express yourself. Why do you think psychiatrists make you lie on the couch and talk, while all they do is murmur "hmmm", "uhuh", or "go on"? Archives
May 2017
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