Dear God, I don’t really have a verse to go with this thought today. Or, better said, I’m not starting with a verse today. I’ve just had a thought festering in my mind for the last two or three weeks that I wanted to work out this morning (not that I’ll get to any real resolution because I’m too ignorant to get that far).
I have a friend’s funeral today. She was a precious woman. She was loved by her family. It was a long struggle for her with various ailments. In and out of hospitals. In and out of physical rehab facilities. A real concern for how she would be cared for after her mom passed. And now her mom has outlived her. Her mom has other children facing physical ailments. Her mom is unbelievably strong and resilient, having survived her own bout with serious cancer about five years ago. And here she is now, burying her daughter today. I cannot imagine how her heart must be breaking right now, even as I type these words.
So my friends life was precious. Her life brought some of your presence into the world. Her life was not cheap. Or was it? It seems like lately, on an aggregate scale, we have started to treat human lives as cheap. I read yesterday that 40,000 Palestinians have died in Gaza in the last 16 months. Even if that number is inflated and only half that many have died, how can we just blink and move on when we here that that many lives have been snuffed out unnecessarily. Then there were the Jewish lives that were snuffed out in a day back in October 2023. Then I read another story yesterday that the Russians are taking the North Korean off of the front lines in Dursk because of their heavy losses. As I understand it, these North Korean soldiers were literally cannon fodder. But each one was a life. Each one was a soul. then there are all of the Ukrainians who have died over the last three years simply because a leader in one country decided he wanted their land as his own. Tens of thousands (hundreds of thousands on both sides?) dead at one man’s whim. And now in our own country, people groups are being marginalized and discriminated against. Racism has reared its ugly head, and people are judging others–bullying others–based simply on the color of their skin. We don’t see these lives as precious. We see them as cheap and something to be exploited for our own advancement.
But what if my life, in the end, is that cheap too? What if it is simply not important that I continue to live? Yes, it would leave a hole like any one of the other hundreds of thousands of people I’ve mentioned here left holes. Just as my precious friend leaves a hole this week. But in the end, am I not just 1/8-billionth of the current population of the earth?
Father, in the end, the value I add is that I get to worship you and the bring your kingdom and your will into this world my treating the lives around me as precious as you treat them. To love them. To encourage them. Maybe to admonish them, but lovingly. Love my neighbor as myself? Well, I think my life is precious, so I think what that really means is that I see each person’s life as being as precious as my life is. Life is not cheap. Their lives are not cheap. At the same time, I could die today and leave the hole that all of us leave because while life is not cheap, it is certainly fleeting. Even a life lived to 100 is still such a small piece of history. So help me to feel the value you place on me, respect and appreciate the value you place on us all, and then act on that. And please comfort the family and friends of my friend who died. She was loved by us. She is loved by you. She is precious still.
I pray this in Jesus and with your Holy Spirit,
Amen
Emails to God 