I've been thinking about umbrellas lately, since we finally got a few drops of rain here. It's been so hot that I saw a sign that said, "The devil called. He wants his weather back." Please come and get it! A friend of mine has been having a hard time lately. I'll call her Celia. She was involved in a serious car accident, involving several cars a while back, and there was a fatality. After having to deal with her own injuries, she was accused of causing the accident, and the person who died was the child of a friend of hers.
I cannot imagine losing a child. I have that same idea in my head that I guess we all do: I should pass on before my children. That's just the way it is supposed to be. But life never does cooperate with our ideas, or our plans, most of the time. Everyone grieves differently. One person will hole up in their room, and won't talk to anyone. Another will cry and want to talk about their pain endlessly (or so it seems to someone who has never faced that kind of loss.) Some of us need to understand, to make sense of something that appears to be so random, so senseless. Whether it's the death of a child, or some other pain, like an unwanted divorce, or a hurricane that sweeps through town, and a whole way of life is gone, in the passing of a wave.
But, if we step outside that umbrella of Christ's love and protection, if we look anywhere for answers other than Him, all we find is more pain, more questions, more heartache. This is what happened to my friend. That grieving mama, I'll call her Mama V, went looking for answers, and for a time, she forgot that as long as she was following Jesus, she was walking in the right direction. She turned away looking for an answer, looking for anything to make sense of the tragedy. She found someone to blame, in my friend. The court did not come to the same conclusion. The relief Mama V was desperate for didn't come through the justice system.
Stepping outside the protection of that umbrella didn't help Mamma V, and it certainly didn't help a lot of others in the process. But no one here is out grab a rope and find the nearest tree. Everyone of us have sinned, fallen short. None of us is righteous. Not one. When we get down to the wire, we don't want justice, we want mercy. I don't believe Mamma V was out for blood, just answers. The truth is, that this side of heaven, we don't always get answers. That's where faith comes in. Do we trust God, or not?
I was talking to a girlfriend, whom I'll call Lannie, about this situation, without giving out any specifics; I wanted to protect privacy. She had a family member who went through the same thing. They had an only daughter who was headed to school, and died in a crash. Her parents just had to make sense of it. They went after the other driver that hit her, the auto manufacturer. But in the end, there never was a good solid reasn why that young woman did a u-turn in the middle of the road. She's gone, leaving a gaping hole in the heart of her family.
That umbrella is there for a reason. Jesus paid a very high price for us. It's so easy to look off, for only a moment, and turn around to find, that that umbrella is nowhere in sight. We need to keep our eyes on Jesus.
Well then, that's what's on my mind and heart for the day. I am praying for myself, because I am usually the last one to see a freight train right in front of my eyes, and I am praying for my friends, that they will be able to forgive each other and get on with their lives. I am sure you have people you love who you are praying for too. Until I find another epiphany in the sock drawer then............
