Scripture: Job 14:1-14 and Mathew 27:57-66
“The death of a young person for no reason is an apocalypse.” The greatest challenge to my faith has been surviving one apocalypse after the next. Epilepsy claimed my 18-year-old sister when I was 10. A car accident got my high school crush when we were 20. And when I was 30, a heart attack laid low my colleague and friend during a pick-up basketball game. He was just 36 years old. Two months earlier, I had danced with him at my wedding, and then he was gone. Little makes sense in the aftermath of losing someone before their time. The void created by their sudden absence, bottomless; the assault of their deafening silence, relentless. One minute, standing on both feet, cheerily answering the phone. The next instant, inexplicably kneeling, gasping for the breath to cry out. But mourning a future that could have been does not honor the person lost or ourselves. It denies the miracle of their existence, the ways they enriched our lives, however briefly.
Faith is making choices to continue living honorably. Choose gratitude instead of despair. Two months earlier, I had danced with him at my wedding, and...I am so grateful to have shared that moment with him. I am grateful that my high school crush signed my yearbook with a personal inscription, seasoned with inside jokes. For every time my sister dared me to keep a straight face and then tickled me until it “cracked.” Choose the joys of community over bitterness. I find joy in the teachers who experienced the first Hoops for Hope charity basketball game, benefitting our fallen colleague’s wife and children. Joy is being Facebook friends with my crush’s twin, witnessing all the journeys she takes, the ways she is thriving. It is spending time with my loved ones, particularly when my father laughs, and for an instant in his smile, I can see my sister. With these maxims, the greatest opportunity of my faith has become cherishing one resurrection after another.
