beauty and tragedy

David with his Daddy, Craig. That’s a picture of love and complete trust.

For the second time this week, I’m plugging in a couple of family photographs to go with my morning words. As I’ve watched the deep drama of so many events play out all week long, often extremely close to home, and as I’ve read scriptures in my morning devotional times, I can’t get these images out of my mind.

Just a couple of days ago one good friend announced – with great joy – that his first grandchild had been born; just a few hours later another good friend was devastated by the news that his five-year-old granddaughter had died. Both men are members of my small group. That same day, the mother of one of our preschool children gave a kidney to her two-year-old (they are both doing well). The next day, in Pensacola, one of Andrew and Naomi’s childhood friends died suddenly, he was 30 years old.

The events of life are sometimes overwhelming; but even when tragedy seems to predominate – both on the world stage and closer to home – we still refer to our experience as “life.” This is because life is irrepressible, and because “life” is a larger concept than the mere span of years we experience here on earth.

I like the way Rebekah often phrases the idea during funerals and memorial services at our church, “Life as we experience it is not enough to explain life.” And, “We were created for eternity.”

The new baby is almost here!

NEW LIFE: I think it is actually very beautiful that birth so often comes along in the same moment as tragedy and grief. Both experiences are passages, book-ends of our span of time here in this particular element of time and space.

That’s why our anchoring in the firm permanence of God’s unchanging faithfulness is such a critical fixed point in the way we navigate life. People live and die; governments and institutions are absorbed into the passage of time; civilizations rise and crumble; continents shift with the Earth’s crust; stars collide; galaxies disappear into the void…

…Yet God exists, not outside but beyond the limitations of time, and space, and imagination, and expectation. I find tremendous comfort and confidence in the knowledge of such definitive stability, in a world that is always just a heartbeat or two away from another crisis.

The bottom line here is not just that I know where I stand, but that I stand with Jesus, the foundation and the fruition of God’s unswerving Covenant of Love.

The bottom line here is not just that I know where I stand, but that I stand with Jesus, the foundation and the fruition of God’s unswerving Covenant of Love.

Andrew and Alicia in Chernobyl a couple of weeks ago

WHAT’S NEXT? Over the next few days (and weeks, and years), each one of us is going to be witness to the marvelous unpredictability that is life.

There will be births (Rebekah Mae, to Naomi and Craig), weddings (Andrew and Alicia), and also things we can’t even imagine. Change is a constant, it’s part of who we are. That’s another reason why, in my understanding of how this constant dance of life works, fixing my anchor in the solid rock of God’s unwavering love in Jesus feeds my soul. Outside of that fixed point of pure light, there is no navigation that makes any sense.

- DEREK