I am in Seattle tonight sitting in Harborview Medical Center Trauma Surgery ICU on the 9th floor. I’m sure most of you know by now I am sitting here with Margaret Stroup. She was shot in the abdomen by a disgruntle employee Wednesday before Thanksgiving Day.
The clock on the wall reads 23;21 which means it’s 11:21 pm. It is still hard to believe I am here and Margaret is there and you are reading this! It’s all just too, I don’t know… It’s like this isn’t supposed to be yet here we are. Reality is Margaret should be in Soldotna getting ready for Christmas and Church tomorrow. Jerry her husband should be in Virginia working away at their friends Jewelry Store. I should be sitting on the couch with my wife watching the 10:00 news hearing about stuff like this not experiencing it!!!!!! It’s like not real, BUT IT IS!!!! We are here in Seattle and you are at home or Starbucks or the office or where ever you are reading this. Weird just doesn’t describe it all. None of us could have ever imagined early on that Wednesday morning we would all be here in the midst of this seemingly nightmare. Yet here we are.
Millions of questions seem to run through my mind as I’m sure they do yours. If you are reading this purely from a spectators position then maybe all this doesn’t make any sense to you. However if you are a member of the cast in this unfortunate Drama then I think you understand at least a little where I am coming from. I mean to say it doesn’t make any sense is to be so redundant and yet that is what I seem to be doing tonight. Being redundant and may be just rambling as well. The questions just seem to come in waves. Most of the time I just accept reality and go forward as I know we must do. However to sit here and watch Margaret lie there in that bed so very sick is just so wrong! But then I understand all the answers that we must embrace: It is what it is! Life isn’t fair. No one deserves any of the wrong that happens in the world. It’s God’s will!!!!!! (I think I understand that one but man is that a tough one. I’ll talk more about that one later.) It rains on the just and the unjust. And soooooo many more.
I will be honest with you all. I just don’t understand it all. I know I’m supposed to be the “spiritual answer man” but I just don’t have too many complete answers tonight. Someone in Sterling reminded me of all the stuff that happened in Soldotna/Sterling back in the 80’s in a 16 month period. I so don’t understand it all. There are just so many. I was talking with the nurses here in the ICU today and they remembered Cody Honrud. We talked about him for a bit. There are just so many. Today I was talking with a mother from one of the islands here in Puget Sound. She was telling me her 16 year old son had a snow board accident on a jump he and some friends made. He landed wrong and broke his neck. He is now apparently a quadriplegic. Is that crazy or what.
The key for me I think is this; I will never know the answer to all these millions of questions and neither will you. If I focus on the things I don’t know and never will know then I will become totally useless. Which is what I think the “dark side” wants me to do. I can allow my mind to go places that it has no business going. In case you aren’t aware I am not God and neither are you. One of the little did-dies that has helped me over the years is this: I don’t understand how a black cow eats green grass and gives white milk and yellow butter, and if you cut her open you get red blood! Now I have thought about that one for years. However just because I don’t understand it, it doesn’t keep me from drinking milk and eating butter. Life is filled with so many paradoxes and oxymoron’s and conundrums that if I think about them too long my head hurts.
So I have chosen to focus on the things that I think I do know. Now there isn’t enough room and time for me to list all the things I do know. However humor me for just a bit more, please. I do know there is a God. I do know that I am not God! I do know that all this planet and humans and animals didn’t come out of a swamp all by themselves or that the incredibly complex human body wasn’t created by an “explosion” in a cosmic never never land. Get real. It takes a whole lot more faith to believe that than in a Creator, Hello!!!! I know there is a book called the Bible. I know that it is Historically accurate. It is archaeologically accurate. It is the most amazing book ever written. I submit to you if it is historically and archaeologically accurate then it is spiritually accurate as well.
According to the Bible, God created a perfect world and put man in it. God gave man what the Bible calls a “free will”. Satan deceived the first man and woman and sin and shame entered the perfect world that God had made. Sin has infected man from that day to this. The reason we are here in this hospital tonight is because of that gift God gave to us human beings called “free will”. I like to do what I want and so do you. However when my selfish actions conflict with someone else or even my own well being we have varying degrees of tragedy. Here we are along with so many more victims of this thing called “free will”. I know there are accidents and “stuff just happens” but the free will of man is certainly got us here tonight.
Too long, too much for one sitting, just too much period perhaps but if you made it this far maybe you understand a little better. Maybe you are more confused than before? I hope that’s not the case but thanks for listening. I think I feel better!
Trusting God for the final answers,
Pastor Alan
Posted by pastoradh 