I was 13 when my best friend was struck and killed by lightning. He was driving a tractor and mowing hay on his family farm. We were both part of a small circle of geeks and despite our differences, he was the one who gathered us and challenged us, finding ways to draw out our gifts so that we could accomplish things none of us could do alone. We would walk together after school, often landing in his back yard, his mother providing snacks as we made sense of the world. His sudden death seemed like the end of the world. We were all scared and unwilling to believe the news. I ran the familiar path to his back yard bursting into the house he shared with his mom and dad and ran straight into the pain on their faces, the truth etched in sorrow deeper than the ocean. I remember thinking I should be doing something to comfort them, but all I could do was cry. It seemed like the weeping would last forever.
It hit us all in different ways at different times. We weren’t all members of the same church, but we walked together and we wept together. Eventually we ate together and told stories and shared memories. There was a funeral that just made the weeping worse, but it let me discover my anger. At the time it did not seem like a gift, but it was a valid response to unexplainable tragedy, no less important than the pain and sorrow. As we move through this time we call Holy Week, I have been remembering my friend and pondering what Jesus’ death meant to the people who loved him and lived on this earth with him.
In just a few days many of us will gather for the Community Cross Walk. We will carry a cross and walk through town, stopping along the way to pray. This year we will carry a cross made from a young aspen that went down in one of our winter storms. We will take turns carrying it and we will take turns praying. Not everyone will get to carry the cross. Not everyone will pray out loud. But we all will walk and we all will listen and be with each other. Our gathering will include people from different churches and different beliefs, but a common desire to walk together with God and with each other. Each year I imagine that we are lifting the burdens, the pain, the suffering of the world as we lift up the cross and carry it.
Later, we will be reminded of Jesus’ words, “I am with you always, to the end of the age.” Even as I write this, somewhere in the world someone is receiving news of unexplainable tragedy. Harm and destruction are happening, but even in the midst of all the chaos, we can be with each other, walking together in the love that sustains all creation. God’s love is durable beyond measure. It cannot be broken or taken from us, not even death can separate us from this love that is deeper and wider than we can ever know. Thanks be to God.
Each month a member of the Cook County Ministerium will offer Spiritual Reflections. This week our contributor is Reverend Beth Benson of the First Congregational Church – UCC in Grand Marais.
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