The day began in the greatest grief Providence could ever bestow upon a people, while it ended with the biggest inconvenience a person could cause upon themselves — Providentially? Probably not. Just dumb luck.
First, let’s get the dumb luck part out of the way. Every Wednesday, my congregation hosts a dinner / devotion / craft / game night for the children of our neighborhood — children who come from some pretty tough backgrounds, moving from one house to the other, back and forth sometimes from one parent or guardian to another, who knows what else.
A group of new children came tonight, and God only knows what they had left beyond the doors of our church tonight, but they were so skittish they had troubles parting with their coats, afraid they might not get them back, which I convinced them I would, and promised to hang them up where they could grab them when the evening was over.
Problem was, as it turns out, that one of the parts of our discipline program was in front of open hooks on which to hang said coats — a five foot something wooden stop sign, a clothespin with a name for each child who participates in our Wednesday night program. The idea behind this stop sign is that at the beginning of the night, all children start on green; if there’s some minor disciplinary thing that comes up (like not abiding by the “hands to yourself” rule), we move their name up to yellow; if something worse comes up (which has only happened once), the clothespin goes up to red.
Well, here’s what happened: I had coats in my hands, and moved this stop sign over to make room to hang those coats on hooks, but the stop sign teetered, about to fall over to the right, and for some reason my instinct was to put my foot on the base to stop it from falling, being that my hands were occupied with holding coats.
Come to find out, this was not the best of ideas, though I did stop the stop sign from falling, yet not without it popping up dramatically into the corner of my right eye.
I remember going over to pick up my glasses on the floor, then a fifth grader asking, “Pastor Allen, are you okay?”
“Did you see that?” I asked, looking down at my bent glasses, trying to register what had just happened.
“No,” a second grader answered, “but that sounded like it hurt.”
“Ooo, Pastor Allen,” one of the seventh graders nearby said, “are you okay? You’re bleeding!”
And indeed I was, from a one inch cut over my eye, which was already starting to swell.
Great, I thought to myself, and we’re low on staff tonight.
It was dumb luck, or dumb instinct.
This morning on the other hand was anything but.
I was called to the hospital for a situation about which I had been praying — a thirty year old who, through a series of circumstances, had organs that were shutting down, such to the point that his family was put into the unbearable situation of making a decision no parent, no sibling, no friend should ever have to make, but they do — courageously, heart-breakingly so.
It wasn’t long after they made that decision, that this young man, loved by many, was gone.
As I already mentioned, this was Providence; my little incident with the stop sign was not.
What’s the difference?
Because matters of life and death are always in God’s hands, even if we might look to the sky and scream “Why?”
As to why I busted my eye. I know that one. God doesn’t have some greater plan, that I can see, for me having a black eye. It just happened because of dumb instinct.
But this young man dying, the way he did — it can only be figured out, as hard as it may seem, as Providence, because Providence tells me not necessarily that there was a reason for this guy to go through what he did and to what end, but that when it comes to such penultimate matters as a soul being gathered into heaven by merciful arms, regardless of circumstances that don’t make sense to those of us with human limitations — matters such as that are solely in the hands of God.
Which somehow is comforting, though not immediately so, but certainly in the grand scheme of things.
I have a black eye. I will probably have a 3/4 inch scar for the rest of my life, and I will always remember how I should’ve let that stop sign just fall, for my eye can tell you that the floor would’ve fared far better and the stop sign unharmed. I really don’t need God’s help with this one.
But with the loss this family has suffered, they’re going to need a whole bunch of God’s help, which is why the “untimely” death of any young person has to be a matter of Providence. If not, how could people possibly endure? For they have been dealt far worse than a 3/4 inch scar to carry around with them the rest of their lives. They have a hole — a gaping hole that won’t be filled with tissue and new skin, only God’s Grace.
Only God’s Grace.
And so, don’t pray for my eye. It’ll heal. And don’t fret the dumb things you self-inflict. Instead, pray according to the bigger picture — those who grieve sudden and inexplicable losses; those who come from broken homes; those who cannot always control what happens and are not to blame, but for whom God is there as a strong tower and refuge — source of strength, source of healing, there to keep the pieces together when life becomes a puzzle of pieces scattered all over the floor to be slowly pieced back together.
