I remember my wife being away at a conference and being busy preparing dinner in the kitchen. I was focused and safely immersed in the mundane activities of domestic bliss, when all of a sudden I could hear a high-pitched cry from the garage. I thought nothing of it because my two boys playing, regularly involves rather loud high-pitched yelps of both pleasure & pain. The problem was that 15 seconds later the noise of it was still there and it was becoming more earnest by the second. It made me come out running, muttering under my breath.
I opened the side door of the garage and the scene unfolded before me. Both boys were crying but my older one was lying on the ground thrashing about grabbing at his neck. At first I thought he was fitting or that he was choking on something but then I was reminded of his high pitched screaming. I rushed to his side and tried to move him and found the situation even more sinister.
Both of my sons had become entangled in a deadly web of almost invisible nylon kite string. Now keep in mind one is six and the other is only four. The older one had the string dangerously wrapped a number of times around his neck. The string was also wrapped tightly around the younger one’s arms and torso and every time he moved in panic, trying to help his brother, the string would pull tighter, cutting into his older brother’s neck.
In those desperate moments my vision narrowed and I felt myself rushing to the precipice of unspeakable horror. My heart was beating out of my chest and I felt sluggish in my thinking. It took me what seemed forever to break those deadly cords.
When I had finally freed both my boys, I held them tightly, speaking to them quietly, reassuring them with tears streaming down all our faces…
I was very fortunate that day, life isn’t always so forgiving !
You know, it is in those moments, when we are immersed in overwhelmingly difficult circumstances, beyond our control – that Jesus’ cry from the Cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me ?” seem most accessible & resonate deeply within me.
You know life wasn’t supposed to be this way. In a more just world, a life lived well is supposed to bring blessing & the favour of God. It is the ones who deliberately pursue their selfish & evil ways that are supposed to suffer and to perish.
Yet as the writer of Ecclesiastes observes the world is rather more topsy-turvy. There are, “righteous people who perish in their righteousness and there are wicked people who prolong their life in their evildoing.”
These last words of Jesus resonate within me for all the times I have been pushed around and broken by a capricious and self-centered world. A world where God sometimes seems distant, even disinterested.
