Where does the time go...

Here we are again in July, the summer begins and tries to catch up with the heat that has already caused us to melt and shrivel like so many plants thirsting for water. Now, perhaps, the afternoon rains will come and cool things down a bit as the earth begins its laborious wobble back to that place where the sun is not directly above, and the winds from north bring relief.

This weekend's news was startling on so many fronts- political, sports, world events, as it seems to be from day to day now, as it always has been. The most startling and disturbing for me, one of those that leaves me empty and looking for meaning, a local thirteen year old acquaintance of my son, killed in an accident involving an all terrain vehicle. The news barely sinks in before the whys begin to come forth from all directions. But no matter the answers, if they are answered at all, the end result remains, a child, a blossoming flower, is plucked before it fully blooms and someones hopes and dreams, someones heart ache, someones first crush, someones little girl, is dead.

So we may turn to God and ask how can this happen? It is easy, on such occasions, to look to the sky, shake one's fist and demand to know the answer that we ourselves can not give. Oh, we can explain dangerous activities, unsafe conditions, mechanical failure, etc, but only God can, we suppose, answer the most painful of questions. But God is silent. And the questioner walks away, angry, humiliated, perhaps even no longer believing in the existence of this careless thing once followed in better times.

God, the Divine, the omniscient, the all powerful, the creator- does care about these things. Cares, because we are all part of his "fabric", we are part of the soul of time, of light, of God. In the most troubling times, the most confusing, there is always healing. We may not understand why things like this happen, but there is always an opportunity for healing in these events, an opportunity to look beyond what we want, what we expect and try to see how God is shaping those of us still taking up space here in the now. The answer lies there.