No one ever sees the worst before it comes. That’s why we call things the worst. If we saw it ahead of time, we could have stopped it.  Some things are just that way.

One of the strongest responses to any tragedy is a collective guilt. We should have known! We should have seen this coming…but didn’t…

Everyone can tell you “it’s not your fault”, but it just feels a lot like you can hear them talking, but not hear anything. The dark is too dark to hear through…yet.

But, I have noticed an odd lining. All tragedy creates strange bonds.

In the midst of terrible circumstances is often when people become closest. Families that endure together live for each other. Teams that are asked to face a players absence have a fiercer brotherhood.

I wonder if it is because fire purifies what it does not burn up.

The fire of hard times seems to always shake out the unimportant until truth is all that you have left.

Is this why people always, always cry and hug and sit without words in horrible circumstances? Why status or what they said to you two weeks ago does not matter any more? Why race or creed or ability fade and only truth remains.

And what is that truth?

“…Faith

Hope

And Love.

But the Greatest of these is Love.”

It’s not a nice sentiment for a gift card; it’s a burning reality.

In tragedy we rediscover what always has been there. Life simply clouded the truth from our eyes.

I heard it described to me once this way by a guy named Levi Lusko…

I live in a city. I look up at night in my backyard and can see about 20 stars. Half are probably planes…but I can see a good 20. The obvious reality is that there are not only 20 stars in the sky. My eyes present what I see as fact, as what is, but in the back of my mind I remember that I have heard there is more than this.

When I am able to go up to the mountains, to get outside the city and stare up at a breathtaking sky, my eyes see the truth. There are too many stars to comprehend. The scene is too big. When all the lights and buzz are removed, when normal is stripped away, I am able to see reality.

Most of our lives are lived in a place of lights and buzz.

We accept that the life we are steeped in is what is real. We get lost in our iPhones and drama and false loves and envy and greed and so many other pursuits that are probably not as healthy to our souls as we have convinced ourselves, but then the crucible of pain brings the false us to the surface. It unmasks life in its immense pain and brings us back to the truth of our lives.

We all have need.

We are all in states of desperation and in need of love and truth. Pain rips away all pretenses and so we wrap arms around each other with no shame for perfect love casts out all fear…

My prayer, and the one thing that keeps me from giving it up is this: the memorization in my bones that God so loved us all, to the point that even before I had felt any pain, He chose to have tragedy rip out his very heart.

He gave up His Son, His only Son Jesus as a substitute, a payment for your very soul and mine. He willingly embraced the tragedy – not enthusiastically, but resolutely. He handed over and watched his son be tortured, as He, the Dad, was tortured in his heart. He let it go to the bitter end, death, so that in the end we may have life.

For His Son did not stay dead, but beat Death.

Jesus saw Death,

Embraced Death,

Went to Death’s house,

Stole Death’s keys,

And killed Death,

With Death.

He destroyed the biggest thing beside Himself…with itself. (Can you get more badass than that?)

But it did not stop there.We now can go to Jesus and surrender our life / our control / our ideas of how it was supposed to have worked, and in that death, we actually find life. We find the more.

In the pain, we can have faith.

In the pain, we can hope.

In the pain, we can love.

In the end, though it hurts like a white-hot iron through our hearts, we can sing through the tears…

“Oh Death,

Where is your sting?

Our Resurrected King,

He’s overcome…

He’s overcome…”

Leave a comment