A sign in Chicago reads: 515 traffic deaths this year...and it presses in. The weight, the smell, the great heaviness, sadness and pervasiveness of death seems suddenly so thick and heavy. It's there in words like cancer, in stories of hard life and failed efforts, in beginning of life and end of life challenges and decisions. It seems to press in on every side to smother, to suppress hope, to destroy one's will for anything: for excellence, vitality, for something better and higher. And then, almost as suddenly but more softly and slowly, I can almost hear the nursery rhyme playing over the hospital's intercom system telling all who will listen that new life has arrived in a tiny package. And I remember Spring and the leaves unfurling green after a long, hard winter. I can see sprigs of life bursting through bedrock and concrete..and I know who wins in the end! I know that death is swallowed up in life and pain will be eclipsed by victory. And hope springs eternal because THE ETERNAL is Life and in Him is no darkness at all. Because He is and ever will be the Eternal, this passing shadow or fleeting pain, this transient sorrow will be swallowed whole and Life will be what remains. Paradoxical? Yes. Still painful? Yes, but nonetheless true. Hope! Life! Victory! Triumph! Light and Glory...these have the last word. And that Word has been manifested to us and is in us.
This pulsates through me; it thrills me; it gives me the energy to take another step, to walk in joy, to revel in the little every day things, to say blessed be the Name of the Lord. It is to be praised from the rising of the sun to its going down.
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