Better days ahead
27/09/13 05:29
There are some people in our town who didn’t sleep well last night. The parents and other family members to two children, one age 7 the other age 10, who are in the pediatric intensive care unit at the hospital are probably too filled with worry to sleep well. Just 24 hours ago they couldn’t have imagined that their life was going to take this turn.
There are also the parents of a child who was injured and treated and released from the hospital who are probably making special trips into the room to check on their sleeping child.
Elsewhere there is a 17-year-old who probably didn’t sleep well. And the parents of that teen had a rough night as well, I’m sure.
The investigation is not yet complete, and the closest I have to details is the press release from the Sheriff’s Office, so I don’t pretend to know exactly what happened, but the images from that news story are enough to make anyone cringe. A SUV, driven by a teen hit a stopped school bus head on. The force of the impact sent one child who was walking down the aisle of the bus flying, injuring her. The SUV then spun around after the initial impact and hit two children who were crossing the street to board the bus. Initial reports were that one of those children had life-threatening injuries. Last evening it was reported that hospital officials now believe that she is stable and heading toward recovery.
I don’t know if the teen was partially blinded by bright sun. I don’t know the speed at which the vehicle was being driven. I don’t know if the teen was distracted by a cell phone. There are plenty of things that I don’t know. What I do know is enough to make me shudder.
It is the kind of incident that is the stuff of nightmares.
It hasn’t been the best week in the story of our town. Tomorrow there will be two separate funerals for two unrelated people who died by suicide. Those families haven’t been doing much sleeping in the past few days, either. Their lives have become filled with nightmares.
I keep the lyrics of a hymn by Mary Nelson Keithahn close at hand in my office at the church. It was a hymn commissioned following the events of September 11, 2001. The hymn is very much in the tradition of the great laments of the Bible. The opening line is “When life becomes a nightmare that will not go away.” That phrase has come up frequently in the dozen years since I first sang the hymn. The accident in Rapid City yesterday was one of those nightmare moments for the people who were involved and those who witnessed the event and its results.
The hymn doesn’t end with the nightmare. Our faith doesn’t end there, either. One of the things about the hymn that attracts me is that it reminds me that ours is not the first generation to have experienced tragedy. This isn’t the fist time that teens have made life-altering mistakes. This isn’t the first time that innocent children have suffered. This isn’t the first time that a community has held its breath.
The key line in the hymn is not its beginning. For me, the key line is “We know our God is faithful.”
When times seem rough and things don’t turn out the way we want it is important to remember that we are not alone. Although the circumstances of each incident of suffering are unique, our people have been through pain before. Our people have known loss before. Our people have faced hard times before.
The relationship between the characters of the Hebrew Scriptures and land is an interesting story. Abram and Sarai set of from the land of their ancestors and leave ownership behind to discover that God is present in other lands and that the promises of God are fulfilled in God’s time and not always in a single generation. Later in the same story Abraham purchases the land for the burial of his wife and our people return to owning land as a memorial to the past. The people occupy the Promised Land only to lose it through corruption, mismanagement and unfaithfulness. With the city of Jerusalem surrounded and the enemies occupying the high country all around, the prophet Jeremiah purchases a field occupied by enemies as a sign that even in the face of defeat and exile the people have a future with God.
Again and again and again our story tells us of times when we were tempted to think that God is not in charge of this world. There were voices that cried that the forces of evil were stronger than God’s power to save. There were preachers who warned of doom and gloom and destruction. There were even proponents of switching religions and seeking false gods.
In each verse of the story of our history, however, there have been a few voices who have reminded our people that God is always faithful. God is always calling us to the future, even when that future is not the way we imagined it, but rather a future created by God.
Ours is a story filled with struggle, pain, grief and injustice. But ours is also the story of God who works out a story of the salvation of the people over many generations. Indeed we do know that our God is faithful.
So today we surround the hurting families of our community with our prayers. We pray for all of the people involved. We pray for their futures even when we cannot quite imagine how those futures will unfold. We know our God is faithful. When we don’t have the right words for our prayers, God continues to listen and to answer prayers in God’s way and in God’s time.
We trust that better days are ahead. And we remember to give thanks for the goodness that we have seen, the mercy we have experienced, and the hope that breaks with the dawn.
There are also the parents of a child who was injured and treated and released from the hospital who are probably making special trips into the room to check on their sleeping child.
Elsewhere there is a 17-year-old who probably didn’t sleep well. And the parents of that teen had a rough night as well, I’m sure.
The investigation is not yet complete, and the closest I have to details is the press release from the Sheriff’s Office, so I don’t pretend to know exactly what happened, but the images from that news story are enough to make anyone cringe. A SUV, driven by a teen hit a stopped school bus head on. The force of the impact sent one child who was walking down the aisle of the bus flying, injuring her. The SUV then spun around after the initial impact and hit two children who were crossing the street to board the bus. Initial reports were that one of those children had life-threatening injuries. Last evening it was reported that hospital officials now believe that she is stable and heading toward recovery.
I don’t know if the teen was partially blinded by bright sun. I don’t know the speed at which the vehicle was being driven. I don’t know if the teen was distracted by a cell phone. There are plenty of things that I don’t know. What I do know is enough to make me shudder.
It is the kind of incident that is the stuff of nightmares.
It hasn’t been the best week in the story of our town. Tomorrow there will be two separate funerals for two unrelated people who died by suicide. Those families haven’t been doing much sleeping in the past few days, either. Their lives have become filled with nightmares.
I keep the lyrics of a hymn by Mary Nelson Keithahn close at hand in my office at the church. It was a hymn commissioned following the events of September 11, 2001. The hymn is very much in the tradition of the great laments of the Bible. The opening line is “When life becomes a nightmare that will not go away.” That phrase has come up frequently in the dozen years since I first sang the hymn. The accident in Rapid City yesterday was one of those nightmare moments for the people who were involved and those who witnessed the event and its results.
The hymn doesn’t end with the nightmare. Our faith doesn’t end there, either. One of the things about the hymn that attracts me is that it reminds me that ours is not the first generation to have experienced tragedy. This isn’t the fist time that teens have made life-altering mistakes. This isn’t the first time that innocent children have suffered. This isn’t the first time that a community has held its breath.
The key line in the hymn is not its beginning. For me, the key line is “We know our God is faithful.”
When times seem rough and things don’t turn out the way we want it is important to remember that we are not alone. Although the circumstances of each incident of suffering are unique, our people have been through pain before. Our people have known loss before. Our people have faced hard times before.
The relationship between the characters of the Hebrew Scriptures and land is an interesting story. Abram and Sarai set of from the land of their ancestors and leave ownership behind to discover that God is present in other lands and that the promises of God are fulfilled in God’s time and not always in a single generation. Later in the same story Abraham purchases the land for the burial of his wife and our people return to owning land as a memorial to the past. The people occupy the Promised Land only to lose it through corruption, mismanagement and unfaithfulness. With the city of Jerusalem surrounded and the enemies occupying the high country all around, the prophet Jeremiah purchases a field occupied by enemies as a sign that even in the face of defeat and exile the people have a future with God.
Again and again and again our story tells us of times when we were tempted to think that God is not in charge of this world. There were voices that cried that the forces of evil were stronger than God’s power to save. There were preachers who warned of doom and gloom and destruction. There were even proponents of switching religions and seeking false gods.
In each verse of the story of our history, however, there have been a few voices who have reminded our people that God is always faithful. God is always calling us to the future, even when that future is not the way we imagined it, but rather a future created by God.
Ours is a story filled with struggle, pain, grief and injustice. But ours is also the story of God who works out a story of the salvation of the people over many generations. Indeed we do know that our God is faithful.
So today we surround the hurting families of our community with our prayers. We pray for all of the people involved. We pray for their futures even when we cannot quite imagine how those futures will unfold. We know our God is faithful. When we don’t have the right words for our prayers, God continues to listen and to answer prayers in God’s way and in God’s time.
We trust that better days are ahead. And we remember to give thanks for the goodness that we have seen, the mercy we have experienced, and the hope that breaks with the dawn.