A helicoptor is flying over the house. At 12:30 AM. It's almost certainly a life flight. Someone's dying right now. Someone's hurting. Someone's crying, someone's praying, begging, pleading with a God they've never talked to before.
So often we reduce death to heaven and hell. And heaven and hell are certainly the most important places in regards to death; they are ultimate . . . for the deceased. But for someone, death is only a mirror and a door to life forever changed. A door through which the living are forced without any answers to life's most bitter questions, nor any guidebook for that which lies beyond. Death changes lives. It's a mirror into which every loving friend, brother or sister, father or mother, even the mere thinking observer must gaze and reflect and respond or react.
There is a certain finality to death which somehow arouses the strongest emotions within every beating heart. My soul, numbed and cooled by books and reactions and conflicts over the preceding months of school, was seared to life last fall by the death of a dear African brother. When I was with Providence in Cameroon, something was dying inside of me--something I knew nothing about. Providence was one of the most passionate people I have ever met. I don't think I ever saw Providence but that he was wearing either a face-covering grin or a solemn scowl of deep thought. He would have nothing to do with the ordinary life. As he walked me down to the square the morning I said goodbye to the town of Sabga at the end of July, it was with sobering sadness but an even fiercer hope that he pledged his love and prayers to me along with his conviction that I would be back. And that morning, the ability to be content and passionate with an ordinary life died inside of me.
When I went back to the states, I could feel that death inside of me as I integrated myself back into ordinary life. My heart would not waste its passions on an ordinary life. The end of summer brought school. My fourth year of college and more of the same ordinary academic pursuits: literature, psychology, language. Nothing thrilled me, nothing broke my heart, nothing infuriated me. I lived a half-smile. I wished upon a heavy heart with eyes bereft of tears. Until Providence died. He was twenty-eight, and I cried for the first time in months. All the other squabbles and conflicts in my ordinary life seemed so small and acidic and I hated it all the more. Providence had been living an extraordinary life, walking everywhere with his smile, his Bible, and his backpack full of tracts. Why take him and leave me? Average, ordinary me, contributing nothing to eternity. I held my face in my hands for a long time, crawled into bed and wished the world would disappear. But I had to go back out and face my excruciatingly ordinary life . . . it was still there and demanding my attention.
I remembered when Providence took me along with him to visit all the sick people at Mbingo hospital. We spent the afternoon in the trama and surgical ward with people who had just lost eyes or limbs and still didn't know if they'd keep their lives. I talked to some of them and saw so much grief and hopelessness. I saw bodies ravaged by accidents and disease. They asked me questions I could not answer and when I'd seen all I could handle I went out and sat on a wall. But Providence was still in there. Still bending over some dying lady's bed and praying. Still talking with families of those in such pitiful conditions. Fervent, compassionate, never-tiring. Driven by love. He came outside and asked me to come in and pray with him for a boy. I went with him, but, humbled and embarassed speechless, could only stand by and let him pray. I begged God to instill in me such a passionate, selfless love as I witnessed in Providence.
And then he was gone. My heart ached. Felt like it was fastened to a wall, but someone was pulling hard and tearing it. I sat with my face buried in my hands looking into that mirror called death. Why should I go on with this ordinary life? I could quit school. Go back to Africa. Live like Providence did, traveling as far as he could, talking to everyone he could. But too many things in this ordinary life tied me down. I looked on, reading emails as I and my other brothers and sisters in Africa grieved Providence's passing. But I could do nothing.
Providence was welcomed into heaven last fall, the place for which he was created, but my heart broke, and I'll never be able to escape the vision of a dark gap left in the hedge. The hole where once an extraordinary life poured passion and energy and everything he could into everyone he could. And his prayer calling me back to Africa.
"The clocks have all stopped, the story's been told
This is your life, so how will it show?
No, you can't pretend that forever
Will never come knocking at your door.
Run through the flames,
Never look back.
What did you think that you came here for?"
--the Afters (One Moment Away)
So often we reduce death to heaven and hell. And heaven and hell are certainly the most important places in regards to death; they are ultimate . . . for the deceased. But for someone, death is only a mirror and a door to life forever changed. A door through which the living are forced without any answers to life's most bitter questions, nor any guidebook for that which lies beyond. Death changes lives. It's a mirror into which every loving friend, brother or sister, father or mother, even the mere thinking observer must gaze and reflect and respond or react.
There is a certain finality to death which somehow arouses the strongest emotions within every beating heart. My soul, numbed and cooled by books and reactions and conflicts over the preceding months of school, was seared to life last fall by the death of a dear African brother. When I was with Providence in Cameroon, something was dying inside of me--something I knew nothing about. Providence was one of the most passionate people I have ever met. I don't think I ever saw Providence but that he was wearing either a face-covering grin or a solemn scowl of deep thought. He would have nothing to do with the ordinary life. As he walked me down to the square the morning I said goodbye to the town of Sabga at the end of July, it was with sobering sadness but an even fiercer hope that he pledged his love and prayers to me along with his conviction that I would be back. And that morning, the ability to be content and passionate with an ordinary life died inside of me.
When I went back to the states, I could feel that death inside of me as I integrated myself back into ordinary life. My heart would not waste its passions on an ordinary life. The end of summer brought school. My fourth year of college and more of the same ordinary academic pursuits: literature, psychology, language. Nothing thrilled me, nothing broke my heart, nothing infuriated me. I lived a half-smile. I wished upon a heavy heart with eyes bereft of tears. Until Providence died. He was twenty-eight, and I cried for the first time in months. All the other squabbles and conflicts in my ordinary life seemed so small and acidic and I hated it all the more. Providence had been living an extraordinary life, walking everywhere with his smile, his Bible, and his backpack full of tracts. Why take him and leave me? Average, ordinary me, contributing nothing to eternity. I held my face in my hands for a long time, crawled into bed and wished the world would disappear. But I had to go back out and face my excruciatingly ordinary life . . . it was still there and demanding my attention.
I remembered when Providence took me along with him to visit all the sick people at Mbingo hospital. We spent the afternoon in the trama and surgical ward with people who had just lost eyes or limbs and still didn't know if they'd keep their lives. I talked to some of them and saw so much grief and hopelessness. I saw bodies ravaged by accidents and disease. They asked me questions I could not answer and when I'd seen all I could handle I went out and sat on a wall. But Providence was still in there. Still bending over some dying lady's bed and praying. Still talking with families of those in such pitiful conditions. Fervent, compassionate, never-tiring. Driven by love. He came outside and asked me to come in and pray with him for a boy. I went with him, but, humbled and embarassed speechless, could only stand by and let him pray. I begged God to instill in me such a passionate, selfless love as I witnessed in Providence.
And then he was gone. My heart ached. Felt like it was fastened to a wall, but someone was pulling hard and tearing it. I sat with my face buried in my hands looking into that mirror called death. Why should I go on with this ordinary life? I could quit school. Go back to Africa. Live like Providence did, traveling as far as he could, talking to everyone he could. But too many things in this ordinary life tied me down. I looked on, reading emails as I and my other brothers and sisters in Africa grieved Providence's passing. But I could do nothing.
Providence was welcomed into heaven last fall, the place for which he was created, but my heart broke, and I'll never be able to escape the vision of a dark gap left in the hedge. The hole where once an extraordinary life poured passion and energy and everything he could into everyone he could. And his prayer calling me back to Africa.
"The clocks have all stopped, the story's been told
This is your life, so how will it show?
No, you can't pretend that forever
Will never come knocking at your door.
Run through the flames,
Never look back.
What did you think that you came here for?"
--the Afters (One Moment Away)
No comments:
Post a Comment