Making sense out of tragedy and loss of loved ones feels like standing tip-toe in mud trying to peer over a fence just a little too high.
The whole picture of events in our lives and the affairs of the world remain a mystery.
We catch glimpses perhaps through the heroism of people like Charlie Kirk, winsomely facing political opponents in open air debate over the issues facing humanity, and dying for his beliefs.
We observe disasters and injustices from a distance like the flash flooding of the Girls Camp in Texas, sweeping away scores of parent's children or school shootings, or the assassination of a Christian leader, for being a Christian leader.
Fruitlessly we ask "Why?"
Or, we attempt to understand the unquenchable pain of those left behind, like Charlie's wife and family who loved him so much for so long, a beloved son, husband, and father now beyond their reach.
Like a flooding river, time carries grief to us as it carries away those fixtures of our life, the characters that defined life's texture, gave it a certain feel and color.
Charlie did this for many in America every day.
For those close to him, a loss like this seems to turn life into a black and white photo we carry around in our wallet. Their absence makes us feel hollow, dare I say, adrift.
The stolen lives of our loved ones still haunt us.
At the root of our sadness is a deep gratitude for the time we had — a gratitude for which we feel guilt that it was not on full display when they were still among us.
So here I stand.
After living more than half my life, taking stock, and pondering the world, the people God's sovereign hand placed in and around me, many of whom are gone.
Charlie's life is truly a picture of hope and courage.
As a husband, a father, and fighter for the Christian conservative values upon which our nation was founded, he believed in a future where freedom reigned over a civilized society.
With my inability to understand "the why," Dante’s opening lines in his Divine Comedy resonate:
"Midway in life's journey I went astray from the straight road and woke to find myself alone in a dark wood."
Perhaps Dante’s lines were in Robert Frost's mind as he penned the opening lines to his great poem "The Road Not Taken," "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood. . . . "
Here at the beginning of my life's autumn, it seems as if most of my choices have been made and I have come to a crossroads, a choice of all choices, one that can only be made after many forks in the road.
How will we handle the seeming flood of hard providences, knowing that we can't explain them? Or even, how can we come to terms in the courtroom of our soul with the heavy rain of choices we've made and the choices other people have made that have built or torn down, endeared, or estranged?
Afterall, it only makes sense those that we love the most give us the greatest pleasure in their actions and severest pain in their absence.
Some cross the Jordan of this world to the next after a long life, well lived. While others seem all too young and are catastrophically ripped from our presence.
We are grateful and better humans for the time we’ve had with those we’ve lost. Our prayers are with Charlie’s wife who is left to do the horrendous emotional math of how to carry on without him.
Charlie believed that Jesus is the Savior of mankind.
So, how would Jesus respond to tragedy and injustice?
After hearing the report of 18 people crushed when the tower of Siloam fell in addition to many Jewish people being killed by an unjust ruler, Jesus addresses a prevalent wicked belief that those killed by a tragic event somehow deserved it saying, "I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish" (Luke 13:5).
Walking in submission to God is the only safe place to be.
No one knows if today will be our last.
When speaking on college campuses Charlie did not take his life into his own hands.
It was a demonstration that he had placed it in God's.
Hence his courage. May America do the same. Let us not run in panic but face the fire unafraid, come what may.
And one more thing, Apostle and pastor, St. Paul, encourages us how to handle the death of our loved ones who died in the Lord, "But we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope."
(1 Thesolonians 4:13).
We rest in our hope of long ages to come in the eternal presence of God together with those we’ve loved and lost.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
(From The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost).
Take the Hope road.
The Rev. Jim Harden is CEO of CompassCare, an anti-abortion medical network based in Buffalo, New York. He is married with 10 children. Recently his medical center was firebombed by anti-abortion activists. Read more of his reports — Here.