Of God, Death and Tears

I was watching Gran Torino and it comes to the part where he is told he has cancer. I started to cry thinking of the long and sad death of my Mother. I said to God, “why do you allow so many terrible things”. I think of children with cancer, birth defects that disable for life and war. I think how much I have and how little most of the world has. I think how the money we have in the west could feed the world. I ask, “Are you blind or are you not even there”. The pain of loss still pushes me down in the dirt. The pain of all that is wrong in this world rises me up in anger. I want to grab some rich guy and beat him in the face and say, “why do you have all this when children in your own city are hungry”? I ask myself, “Why when you are extra money do you do for yourself and not for others”?

I have no answer to any of these questions but the last. I am selfish and I will justify my actions just like everyone else does. I think of God and I feel a warm hand on my left shoulder. God is not of this world he is of the next. We are of this world and we are the ones that are supposed to be helping each other. We are the ones that stand beside the dying and the sick. We do it for our reasons and in the name of God. In the end we are selfish and even when in the name of God, we do it for us in reality.

I know God is there, I have felt him and I have seen his hand work wonders. But he will not stop the pain of this world that is our job. We are the ones that go to war even when we do it in his name. We are the ones that feed the poor even if we do it in his name. We are the ones that steal and kill and we are the ones that protect and serve. God is a light that we look to for inspiration. To quote Babylon 5, “We are grey we stand between the light and the dark”. To expand on that, “we are the ones that chose our path”.

We all need to shed tears and we all need to yell at God and ask why. The answer can only come from inside however. For in our pain we do not hear the gentle whisper of Gods voice. All we hear is the torrent of our pain. So he uses others to show us the path. It is our job to pick that path. And it is our task to know we will always think of ourselves first.

When Mom was sick and I went to see her every day I told myself it was for her but half of the task was for me. I could not let a day pass that I did not have her in it. I needed her as much if not more than she needed me. In the end when she lay was close to death and it would come any moment, I was there because I did not want her to die alone. I was also there to close the chapter of my life that was her slow death.

I do not know if the pain will ever end but for now it will come back now and then and I will cry.

Peace, Dave...