sorrows

The fact that Edinburgh buses often come in threes I can understand.

The reason's been explained to me and I see the obvious logic of it all.

Quite why it should be that sometimes there's that three-fold pattern when it comes to deaths - that I don't really understand. I'm just aware it happens.

Maybe it's just coincidence.

But on days like this it leaves a certain sorrow sort of hanging in the air.

A young man with his roots out in Kirkliston died on Friday afternoon. A very tragic death. Sudden, unexpected and a fine young man, respected, loved and cherished by a multitude of different folk. So much to give. So much to live for.

And then in an instant an accident takes all that just gone.

I was out to the family home today. What lovely, lovely folk his parents and his family are. The young man's father had his brother die quite suddenly, a good many years back now, in a similar sort of accident as well.

A man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.

Indeed.

It isn't ever easy seeing a family like that. A family I'd never met before.

And in a sense, all that I can ever hope to bring - all that I aspire to bring - is a sense of the presence of that other guy who more than any other was 'a man of sorrows acquainted with grief.'

A sense that there is indeed a God who cares, despite the cruel hand life seems to deal. There is a God who understands. There is a God who's come.

And comes to be with us in all our sorrows, griefs and pains.

That's all I hope that I'm able to bring. Somehow.

It's going out on a limb each time. Stepping out in faith. Because that can only ever be what happens (the sense of the presence of Jesus himself) if God makes it happen himself.

It's miracle every time. There's nothing I can ever do or say that somehow sort of conjures up that sense. Nothing. As I say, it's miracle.

And every time I call on folk like that, I'm looking for that miracle. Praying for it. Hard.

I find it very humbling, a pretty awesome thing, when the miracle takes place. It was like that today. Something that was palpable.

In a strange sort of way I have no doubt there's something quite significant going on in all their lives.

This morning, as well, I had word of another death. The grandmother of the young man who was married just a week ago.

It's sometimes all the harder for a family when soaring joy and searing grief are set so close to one another.

Such a wonderful day last Monday down in Rothbury and Alnwick. And then such sorrow last night, just six days later on.

It was Sunday night she died. The day of resurrection.

Sometimes having that sort of permanent 'marker' in a family's grief can help. You can't ever think of the death without being reminded of what, in the face of death, God's done. The weekly assurance we're given that what was accomplished once, a long, long time ago, will one day happen again. For all of us.

I had a call as well today from a neighbouring church. A member of their fellowship had died. The minister was away. Would I cover in his absence?

Of course.

(It's hard, as I said before - it's hard to say 'No')

The weight of their grief is always something that I feel. No matter that I haven't ever met the folk before. It's always something that I feel. It weighs upon my heart.

And all that I can think is that the reason why it feels like that is just because a family's grief is something which the Lord himself must feel. And somehow that, in some small way, transmits itself to me.

So that my very feeling their grief becomes, in a way, the tangible means of the presence of Christ being known.

It's a strange and mysterious thing.

And in its way, as I said before, nothing less than miracle.