Life as a Christian Woman

Earlier this week, I attended the family visitation after the death of a former co-worker. His mom had also worked with us, so I knew her, his wife and kids, and his sister. His death was sudden and tragic. He was accidentally electrocuted and instantly killed.

Bob was a prominent citizen in my small hometown. He was an artist and had put a lot of time and talent into preserving our town’s history in art. A mural he painted in tribute to some of that history graces the side of a downtown building. He had worked on numerous projects to paint and draw historic buildings. But he wasn’t just an artist. He was a family man with a wife and two teenage daughters. He took care of his mother, a widow, and his sister, divorced with small children. He coached little league for a while, was active in his church, and often spent his spare time helping friends with whatever needed doing.

His sudden passing stunned the whole town. It seemed like everybody turned out to pay their respects to his family; I stood in line for 45 minutes to see them myself. I had plenty of time to think about what had happened. His mother had just watched her husband, Bob’s father, die of cancer a few short years ago. I couldn’t imagine what this must be like for her. His wife now had two grieving daughters to care for while wracked with her own grief over suddenly being a widow. In the casket was placed little paper cards that his small twin nieces and his nephew drew for their “Uncle Bob.” He had a been a strong presence in their lives since his sister’s divorce. I don’t think his sister ever stopped crying. While standing in that line, looking around at everyone filing in and out of the funeral home to see them, I prayed God would somehow comfort them. And I knew that in this tragedy, they must have so many questions.

It is our human nature to question things, to try to find logic and order. We place everything in neat categories and name them, searching always for understanding of the nature of those things. But when something happens like Bob’s passing, it defies understanding. We don’t know where to file it. It was sudden, tragic, senseless; a death that cannot be understood. So we turn to God for answers. Why? Why must his family experience this grief? Why are his little girls left fatherless? Why is his mother left without a son, so soon after her husband’s death? What purpose could have possibly been served by taking this man from the world now?

I believe God understands those questions. Some people think it is sin to question God’s purpose for things. But that God created us to be rational beings. It was He who brought everything on earth before Adam to be named. It was He who shaped our minds and our spirits to be so different from the animals. He knows that we are stuck in the limitations of time. We cannot see, as he can, all of time from beginning to end. We have only the here and now, and what has passed. And within that limitation, He understands that we grieve, and that grief can overwhelm all other emotion and thought.

Some things we will never understand. Some things just make no sense; they cannot be categorized into our neat little filing system in our minds. But as I looked at the faces of Bob’s family and hugged them, there was one answer I knew in my heart. God will provide. That answer seems so short. But in it is also beauty, for those three words contain everything Bob’s family, and any of us, will ever need.

David Phelps - Gentle Savior

I know you are with your Gentle Savior, Bob, and your family is in His hands.

christian, grief, loss, religion, God, death