Today is a strange day for me. Eight years ago today, I was sitting in a computer lab at the Pryor Science Building at Harding University, feverishly fighting with a C++ program that refused to do what I was telling it to do. It was the spring semester of my senior year, and I was finally taking an entry level computer programming course that was required on the Biochemistry degree plan. (To this day I am certain that it was the computer's fault. Without a doubt, I had a deft mastery of this computer programming language less than two months into my only semester of studying it. But that is a different story.)
It is funny how wrapped up we can become when things do not seem to go our way. At 10:30 that Sunday night, I was engrossed by the need to make this computer bow down at the commands of my finger tips. The computer had another idea. Like the times our black lab decides to defiantly ignore my voice, it would not cooperate. I was frustrated, confused, and angry...
How quickly things change. How quickly a single moment trivializes the things that once seemed so important. It is amazing how clear the events of the evening still are in my mind. Instead of bowing to my commands, the computer finally convinced me that it was king. I left the room of defiant 486s and headed back to what are now known as the East Side Apartments. You might say that I was in what some might call a frustrated huff. When I walked through the door, I basically bypassed my roommate of almost four years with the insincere pleasantry of "How are things going?" He said almost nothing. I went back to the bedroom and tossed my bag on the bed. When I came back he stayed unusually quiet, even for an accounting type, sitting silently, pensively on the couch.
Within minutes our phone rang. It was not a normal ring, but the shorter, broken ring, that signaled it as an off campus call. By the time I picked up the phone, the silent CPA was already gone, out the door like a flash of lightening. “Hello.” On the other end of the phone my dad's voice broke an uncomfortable silence. “Eric, I want you to know that we are all alright.” It was an instant tip off that something was, in fact, not right in the world. To this day I am not sure whether that was the right way for my dad to start the conversation, but I cannot think of any other, more appropriate way to start it. (My parents will always be much wiser than me!)
Over the next few minutes, my parents told me that one of my best friends, my cousin Brian, had been killed in a car accident on the way back to
When my parents were finished, I dropped the cordless phone, hit the door with both fists (hard enough that my watch popped off of my left wrist), and fell like a sack of grain to the floor. Within seconds, my best friends were around me, laying hands on me, listening to me wail, and holding me in the midst of my pain. As soon as the phone rang, Brent had stepped out to get Jeff and Kile from across the breezeway.
There are no words to describe my love for those guys. They were and are my community of faith. They shared in my suffering that night in profound ways. As I sit here now, I am still unable to find the words to thank those guys for what they did for me that night. They were Christ in the midst of my brokenness and despair.
What happened to my cousin that night was not right. I was frustrated, confused, and angry... I believe that our God brings life out of death, that he is a God of resurrection and new creation. (Some amazing things happened in the wake of Brian’s tragic death that can only be attributed to the action of God’s advent into the world in the midst of our chaos.) My faith rests on the belief that God is working for the restoration of his world. Yet, the waters of chaos still break in all too often for my comfort. I cannot explain why God chose to just set boundaries or limits on their movement. Why did he not choose to vanquish them altogether? I guess that is why God’s creative work is an ongoing process. At times chaos seems to reign, but God is still in the business of restoring life out of the chaos and death that come, even when we may not see his creative work. I guess that is a part of living the life of faith. Today is a reminder of that. It is a reminder I need in the midst of tsunamis, Suburban wrecks, and malignant cells that overtake the bodies and minds of the faithful. “Rise up, O Lord, make your face shine on us, so that we may be saved.”
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