Again, this week, I find myself in a place of lament.
As I picked my son, Isaiah, up at daycare yesterday NPR broadcast a story of a family finding out that their 2 year old and elderly parents had died in the collapse of their apartment building. (see link below) The story began by introducing us to the couple, and told of the woman leaving for work at a department store leaving her son with his grandparents. The baby cried and wanted to come along, but she left him, and minutes later the earthquake struck. It’s every parent’s nightmare—“I should have brought him with me!”—come vividly and terribly true. The NPR host spoke with them as the excavation equipment began working, and they hoped against hope to find the boy. Finally, a rescue worker brought the news that they had found the bodies of an elderly man cradling a small boy, with an older woman right beside. The couple dissolved in tears, and as I drove, Isaiah staring contently out the window, I did, too—all of the frustration of the day dissolved away. I was with that woman who had lost her child.
I had been late to get Isaiah—I rode my bike to church but discovered as I was leaving that the tire was completely flat, so I set off to walk home—just over 2 miles, to retrieve the car and pick him up. On the walk, I’d been hurried and occupied, but also startlingly aware (as I had also been riding my bike that morning and the day before) at how little I actually perceive as I go about my day. Driving, I am so intent on speed—getting through the next stop light, getting in the correct lane to go fast, fast, fast. Time in the car is wasted time, the reasoning goes, and so I want to minimize the waste. Logical, right?
The thing is that time in the car isn’t wasted time—there is no wasted time. The only wasted time is time that we spend spiritually being somewhere else. The only waste is our absence from our own lives. Slowing down by riding my bike or walking allowed me to perceive what I’ve always “seen,” but never noticed.
We so frequently don’t engage with what’s around us. News on the radio of bombs going off in faraway places, of disasters and terror, don’t touch us. We go about hurrying, on to the next task before having completed the last. Hearing about that couple in China who had lost their baby, I was put in mind of all of the people who have lost children and parents both in China and in Myanmar and places of desperation all over the globe and close to home. I’ve listened to all the reports of thousands dead, but wasn’t able to actually hear it until I was invited into the story of a single family. I was able to be present in a way that had escaped me before, just as my unexpected walk home from work helped me to see what I never do.
It’s a deeper truth than just “stopping to smell the roses” (lilacs in this case). Being a Christian is about being present both to the pleasure as well as the pain that is all around us. Being a Christian is about being open to God, and God is to be found in the depth of the present. As I walked past the lilacs and wisteria on Bacon Street yesterday afternoon, God seemed everywhere. As I cried for that family in China, God, too, came near. The challenge of the Christian life is to be willing to bear witness to all that life offers us. We all have ears to hear—will we have the courage?
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