Life Happens, Love Happens

“People don't always get what they deserve in this world.”

― Lemony Snicket, The Blank Book

____________________________________________________

Perhaps it is not just a coincidence that tomorrow I begin leading a study

On the book of Job…

The day after a person who I believe was an authentic voice for God

Died

At age 37

Of complications stemming from a reaction to anti-biotics

Rest in Peace

Rachel Held Even

May your beloved husband be covered with love

And your children, ages 1 and 3, feel the love embrace them

Honestly

This angers me

I am not very happy with God right now

It is such an injustice,

That this loving, kind woman should die

When a narcissist who is slowly destroying not only our country

but the planet

for the sake of money

lives

Not only lives, flourishes

And is aided and abetted by people soaked in power and wealth

And adored by people who have chosen the way

Of hate and fear and domination

Over service and love

This angers me

Even though I know this is the way the world works

In Job it is very clear

The innocent suffer

And Jesus made it all too clear

The sun rises on the evil and on the good,

And the rain falls on the just and on the unjust.

It is just a fact

That there is no direct causality between a good life and prosperity

And an evil life and trial

Otherwise Rachel would be alive and with her children

And someone else would find their life in ruins

What kind of God is it, who watches such absurdity?

What kind of God allows such stuff to happen?

It raises the question, doesn’t it, about how God interacts with the world

Is God, as Jim Wallis suggests, “an active agent” in the world?

And if God is an active agent, why does such injustice exist?

I suspect it comes down to how God chooses to work

God always, it seems, in his actions in the world

Clothes himself/herself with humanity

God always works through people

God always resides in people

God always shows up in the flesh

Which is terribly “iffy” way to do things

And yet

It changes God from something up there out there

From something distant and immanent

To someone close and intimate

And there is a cost to that intimacy

Life happens

Greed happens

Hate happens

Compassion happens

Generosity happens

Evil people flourish

Good people die

But still God is present

I suspect that Rachel in her death

Moved from communion with God to union

And will be forever blessed

And I suspect that for some, living is ultimately more tragic

than is dying, as Rachael did,

surrounded by love, respected, and missed and mourned

and when arriving back from whence one came, the Sacred, being welcomed, and at home.

God was clothed in Rachel

And it showed

God is clothed in others

Who are not awake

And it does not show

But it does not change the reality of how God works

As Rachel told us….

“We could not become like God, so God became like us. God showed us how to heal instead of kill, how to mend instead of destroy, how to love instead of hate, how to live instead of longing for more. When we nailed God to a tree, God forgave. And when we buried God in the ground, God got up.”

As it was

So it is

Love wins