Bad things happen to good people. Wonderful people, filled with love and light, who have so much to give to the rest of the world, die from disease or terrible accidents. How can God let these things happen? Why? I don't know, but I do know that God doesn’t manipulate people’s deaths, decide to kill or save, or move us as chess pieces in some mysterious “master plan”--at least the God I worship does not. I have to believe that in the midst of pain, God is with us, surrounding us in love.
I learned this for the first time at 3:00 am on May 7, 2005, with my mother's night-time phone call. My father’s imminent death had come; the cancer that was galloping through his body finally won the battle. After we spoke, I lay on the floor of our bedroom, sobbing and clutching my heart. Palpable, painful grief racked my body as I cried, “It hurts! It hurts!” My husband held me silently. My father should not have died of cancer three months shy of his 60th birthday. Not the man who exercised every day and ate healthfully, not the man whose balanced, mindful spirituality was a model and inspiration for all who knew him, not the man who lived by his word, honestly, faithfully, and lovingly: that man should not die--not ever, but certainly not before he was 60 years old.
Recently, I learned of the death of a friend and mentor, a minister from my former church. Once again, life is not fair; that fact smacks me in the face. Once again, a person so filled with love and grace, so generous of spirit, so dedicated to good works, so pure of heart, is struck down in tragedy. Once again, the grief… I think that once you feel grief, real actual, knock-you-down grief, it comes back in pieces with every other loss you experience. I’ve felt a portion of heart-rending pain with every subsequent loss since the death of my father: aunts, grandfathers, beloved pets, friends, and now this most recent friend. It doesn’t matter that I haven’t seen her in two years, the shadow of pain still clutches my heart. It’s only a testament to her loving soul that I am so sad, even after such a long time of separation. She should not have died, not now, not so suddenly, not so tragically. Still, should nots don’t matter much in life, though; life isn't fair, shit happens, and we go on.
Bad things happen to good people, there is no doubt about it. I think that’s why Christians need Good Friday. Jesus should not have died; not the man who healed the sick, not the man who gave sight to the blind, not the man who was supposed to liberate the Jews from their bondage. Once again, it should not have happened, and, once again, we grieve. We remember the grief, the loss, and the pain. We need to live through the grief, because the love is buried there. God didn’t create the pain, or manipulate the situation as part of his master plan, or allow it to happen to test us. God came into our grief, to live through it with us, and with the living of it and the dying in it, to destroy it forever. We still feel the pain, but all is well. As Catholic mystic, Anthony de Mello says, “all is well, though things are a mess, all is well”.
In the image of Jesus’s final sacrifice for all of mankind, I see how those moments of grief, bound by love, are possible. In the darkened sanctuary on Good Friday evening, surrounded by the quiet sounds of weeping, filled with the smells of incense, and the sounds of soft music, I feel it. I feel my eyes tearing, my throat closing, and my heart breaking open. I see a God-made-man dying a horrible death for the love of us all. Most importantly, I see an image of the most powerful human being to ever walk the earth submitting to the evil of the world and experiencing excruciating pain, all the while with God holding him in the palm of his hand.
And, I know that, although bad things happen, that life is radically unfair, that death is tragic, death is not the winner. No matter the circumstances, God takes our grief into his, our pain into his, our loss into his, and he loves us through it all. And, he wins.
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