I wrote earlier of the not-rightness that spring seems to proclaim to an aching heart. But lest I dramatize death too much, I write on. Write to proclaim that even the loudest weeping or the most heart-wrenching sobs can have the echoes of mercy in them if we look long and hard enough and press past to endure.
I walk out to the clothesline, noise of those nearby falling on inattentive ears. But suddenly, a single word startles me out of the ordinary moment of clothes on my arm and clothespins in the basket.
Just a name I recognized, called out, reminding me of tragedy.
And suddenly, pain grates on the eardrums like another sound blaring the warning of dread and doom.
It's a harsh reality, brought back by so many little things that testify to the wrongness of it all.
I seek meaning as I stir food in the kitchen and it comes to me, that strain of redemption's song found even in the funeral dirge my mind is writing moment by moment.
We, we were the ones who died, we the lifeless beings no rescue crew could save. All best efforts too late, all remedies too frail.
Helpless, gone, no life--no doctor's attempts could save that which was too far gone. Too dead if there were such a thing.
But bursting on the scene came a rescuer, plunged into the depths of earth that both might be raised again. And He was not too late. His remedying life-blood, how could not but give life?
So hallelujah that broken eggshells, dandelions, and all this cold pain points us back to that if nothing else.
[And maybe this is why Lewis said "For this I bless you as the ruin falls. The pains
You give me are more precious than all other gains." Amen.]
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