I am writing this article just days after the tragic coach crash in Switzerland which killed so many children.
The mist of the last few mornings along with the terrible events in Switzerland has led me to do some reflecting. There is something intrinsically human about asking the question why? Why did this happen, why did that person die? The logical answers, of human error or human sickness or accident, are often not enough; we are craving to find a meaning beyond the mystery. If you like to see the sun that we know is somewhere behind the mist.
I do not suggest that I have the answers to these questions, if I’m honest my own faith is often rocked and shaken by tragic circumstance. But I do cling to the foundation that all of life and love is not simply meaningless. I read this week of an old British seafarer; Saint Brendan. He wrote after one particularly difficult voyage: “Stormy seas make weathered sea-men, those who proved God in the deep.†Sometimes keeping going is all we can do, that perseverance in itself weathering us and showing to others that just maybe there is a path through their mist.
Our family received a rubix cube key ring for Christmas… an annoying little thing, and I have taken to toying with it. (Or is it toying with me!) Many hours have been spent trying to figure it out. So far I have failed, I’ve been defeated… but I carry on trying because I know that this cube is solvable, there is the possibility of joy breaking through the mist… I’ve been mighty close a few times, who knows perhaps I’ll have cracked it by Easter day!!
My Christian faith affirms that life is the same, despite the tapestry of disappointments and sadness we do not quite lose hope. Our symbol of hope is of course the cross of Christ, in our tradition an empty cross. The blackest day of all, the execution by human hands of the most fully human life that ever lived. Yet our cross is empty and the remembrance is known as “Good†Friday, for this horrific event is a meeting and meaning point. God’s love meets humanities ultimate selfishness, and thankfully beyond even death, good and God are triumphant; nothing not even death can now defy hope. Love life and meaning henceforth have the victory, even if we surrounded yet by mists cannot see it. I pray that you and those that you love will have a good Easter, and though events can “weather†us… may we like Jesus, “prove God in the deep.â€
Stephen
