Come away with me on an excursion unlike any other. Make sure that you have strong hardy shoes that you can hike with. Yes, hiking boots will do. Actually, dress like a hiker. Hat? Check. Long sleeved jacket over hiking shirt made of breathable material? Check. Full length trousers? Check. Hiking socks and boots? Check. Hiking stick? Optional. Ready? Where are we going you ask? Well, to a crash site. A plane crashed in a place that is walking distance from here. The person in charge of the investigation has heard your questions and feels the same way you do. Since his position does not allow him to say much about it, he has invited you on-site to see what happened. He believes that if you see the sheer meaninglessness of the accident, you will be better able to speak about the madness. You will be able to ask questions from a place of having witnessed because once you witness the results of the accident your tone will carry a level of authenticity that others who have not visited will have. Ready? Oh, there will be one other person who will come along. God.
Access to the crash site is through a tract of unused farmland. We make our way, in single file, with you leading the way and God at the rear. It is a beautiful sunny day. It really should be a dreary, cold rainy day to match the gravity of what has happened. It should have rained through the night so that it could be difficult for us to reach the site. We should be finding it difficult to walk. We should be struggling to pull our feet from the clutches of mushy dark clay soil. But it is not. It is an easy hike and the only thing that alerts one to the possibility of an unspeakable sight awaiting is the unnatural silence and heaviness in the air. It is easy to remain angry at God who you feel that as usual, is slow, behind and dragging – could He not have made the day match the grief of the moment? Could He not at least caused it to rain?
How could you?
We make our way out of the bushes into the clearing where we are suddenly covered by a cloud of grey ash. The investigation team had just lifted up a part of the metal, about one meter square and that caused ash to rise up and cover the area. We both cough caught by surprise. Our eyes tearing because of the smoke. I sense your anger rising as the cloud of smoke dissipates and we are left taking in the unbelievable sight in front of us. The grass closest to us and meters away from the crash, is seared black by the intense heat from the plane. It is obvious to all that an immense fire raged here. A fire that razed everything around it to the ground to the point where most of the plane was indistinguishable. Just black soot everywhere dotted here and there by clumps that at first glance appears to be trash. You stumble on something and fall and that is when we realize that we had still been walking in a daze into more of the crash site. I come to a stop next to you as you pick yourself up, look at the black soot on your hands and I can see you realize … at the same time as I do “This black stuff could also contain bits of the souls who were on this plane!”.
I can no longer look at the crash site. My teary eyes, still stinging from the smoke and the heat that hovers around us, are fixed on you. I see the anger flash in your eyes, your body tense as you pick yourself up. I see your shoulders shaking as they set in determination for what you are going to do next. At that moment when you fell, God reached the clearing and we both sensed that He had not walked further out. I watch transfixed as the anger rises in you as you get up. I know you that once you get to your feet you will turn towards God. But what will you do and what will you say when you face him? What will you say through the pain in your throat? What words will make their way out of the current jumble of confusion and hurl themselves towards He who could have stopped this but did not? What will you hands do to the One who you were told to believe is all powerful whose hands can part seas and heal, whose hands did not provide a safe place for the plane to land? In what direction will your feet propel your body?
How could You?
Everything slows down as I hold my breath and wait for what will come. In that short space of frozen time, I imagine two scenarios. In the first, I imagine that you will in rage walk towards Him, screaming silently in anguish as you try to muster the words to say what you want to say. The silent scream carrying raw pain from deep in your bowels. As you come close to Him you stick a finger into His chest and miraculously – your voice is working now – “You did this!” I imagine you scream at Him. Spitting into His face. You are beyond caring just as you imagine He is beyond caring. “How could you stand by and watch this happen? You knew! You know all things, don’t you? So you must have known that this would happen! How could you stand by and watch? What kind of God allows this – this destruction, these useless deaths to happen? Don’t you care?” Would you slap Him? Pound at Him? What else would you ask? What else would you do? Would you turn around and walk away? “I am out! I do not want to be associated with a god who claims to be loving but is powerless to stop things like this from happening. You seem to enjoy watching us suffer! Why else would you allow people to die? People to fall ill? Murder? Rape? Poverty?” Would you pace up and down as if confused whether to run further into the crash site or run back to Him and shake Him into realizing that there were people on board that plane who died. Dreams that died with them. Dreams that He might have even put there.
Or would you do the something else? As you turn to face Him, would your tear filled eyes connect with His and see in them the faces of the each and every one of the people who had been on that plane. In the instant that your eyes connected, would you realize that He knew? That He knew each person, had known them even before they spent a day on the earth. He had known them by what their families called them but He also knew them by the special names He had given them? He had called each one of them. Some might have responded to His call and He had known which ones these were. Others had not and He had known these ones too. The first, He had adopted and the others He had wanted to adopt. He knew which element of soot had once been part of the plane and which had once been a body. He knew his children had gotten onto this plane and were now no more.
How could You?
Would you have seen his eyes well with tears? Would you still have walked towards Him keen to make him as angry as you were? “They were your children, for crying out loud! You claimed to love them? Why isn’t your heart breaking like mine?” Would you still stick your finger accusingly into His chest? Would you feel His heart breaking as you did so? Would you be able to stand as waves of love crashed out of the broken heart and flowed over you? Would you remember that the very nature of God is love so if His heart broke, love, hope, peace, gentleness would pour out? Would you launch your body at Him to fight? After all, don’t you have a right to be mad? To grieve this devastating loss? This heart wrenching and soul crushing disaster should be given a chance to be aired. As you collide with Him wanting to make Him feel pain, the same pain that your body and heart seemed to carry, will your body connect with the One who is life? Will you find that you are suddenly drawn inwards, from despair to hope and from hurting to healing? Will you realize at that moment that even when God’s heart has broken, He cannot go against His own nature to be life and light, to be hope and heal, to love.
You know that whatever choice you make will not be held against you. What choice will you make? I wonder as you finally get to your feet.
I pray that you will choose the second. I pray that you will choose to love knowing that to choose love is choosing to put to death hopelessness, desolation and despair. Knowing that choosing to love is choosing life, healing and joy in the very midst of grief. Amen.