A Settling

It feels cold in Tokyo this morning. I don't usually get cold, being Scottish (we're mostly upright, de-horned Angus cattle). This morning though, a fog lay on the ground that won't part to let me step through it. Instead, it goes through me and travels up the back of my neck.

I just stepped off the plane after a 3 day trip to the States. The day before, a FedEx jet caught bad wind sheer off the tarmac and crashed, killing the two pilots. Oddly, I thought it a blessing that it wasn't a commercial liner. When I bought the plane ticket a month ago, I remember asking my clients if they minded if I spent an extra day in the States. Turns out that was a blessing too: I wouldn't have been able to return if I hadn't. They closed the runways for a day due to the wreckage and everyone was diverted. I would have been stuck in Detroit until I could get another flight, the next several days being booked.

So, equally thankful and woeful, I sit now back at my desk in Tokyo mulling over the two handed grip of feeling that has me about the throat. The highly subjective nature of what we sometimes call "good" and "bad" whips back and forth in my thoughts. These subtle, dueling feelings that writhe within us over death - the death of one and the near-miss of another. Death is evil, I have no doubt. How dare I feel thankful that I live without realizing my self-centeredness? How can I wrestle with sorrow over the death of men I did not know, but yet be glad it was only those two and not more?

No one is innocent, no one escapes the final call. I suppose heaven is filled with weeping for the lost, but the joy of being with the Living God wipes those tears away, every sorrow made whole. Perhaps, as it was once said, that those sorrows will not be avenged but will be encompassed by His Glory. We find, as Lewis did, that it isn't that God allows these sorrows, but that they are part of His true nature. He is present in them. The mature creature carries both sorrow and joy, grief and gladness. Love makes loss all the deeper and loss makes the love fuller, more worthwhile. More alive.

I cannot imagine the loss I would feel if my own family were taken, yet others spared. I won't pretend to do so. But I do know the confusion and conflict that come with the circle of life and death. It has crossed my mind that the Lord allows us to feel - on an infinitely smaller scale - the separation that He feels from us when we sin, and the horror that He went through separating Himself from His Father, eternally, willingly, so that we would not have to feel it any more so than we already do.

It is for that reason, the Son and His gift, that I can love God, and that alone. How could we love a god that tells us to rise above pain and loss; who stands so far above humanity that he knows neither? We couldn't. That is not what love is. Love dips down into our pain and shares it with us, bears it for us, and comes out shining on the other side. God presents Himself in the death of those pilots and all others, weeps for each of us as we pass. Every falling sparrow, every lost child, He knows, He grieves, He suffers. Yet He overcame death for us, that we may be joyful and thankful in life. But dare I keep that life to myself? No. I must offer it up as well. "Anything that does not die, cannot be resurrected."

It has started raining now. Pattering against my window. I will enjoy these moments of chilled sorrow and cherish the tears for family gone, and friends missed. We are not alone in these moments any more so than we are when blessings fall like cold Tokyo rain.