Jesus tells us in the Gospel today, in regards to terrible things that may happen in our life that we may be confronted with, to not be afraid, “for such things must happen first…”
I’m going to get a little personal today, and tell you a story. It was November 12, 1988.
I’ll never forget their faces. I had just woken up on that morning, 28 years ago. I walked into the kitchen, blanket wrapped around me, and saw my family huddled around the counter and the table. I could tell something wasn’t right. And that’s when my sisters told me that my oldest brother had been killed in a car accident just hours before.
I looked at my mom and dad. Their faces said it all, just staring blankly and helplessly into the distance, as if their hearts had been ripped from their chests suddenly in the night. And they had. He was their firstborn.
I was 11 years old, but I will never forget that moment. It was my first taste of death, of someone close to me. I never had the relationship with my brother that my other older siblings did. The older five were all born in a span of 5 years. And then I came 7 years later. And so they had a few more memorable years with my oldest brother as they all grew up together, and went to high school together.
Me? I only have a few memories. I was 7 when he graduated high school, and so there are very little memories I have of him in those days. There are a few though, the most special of which was when we he was living in Columbus, Ohio. We were visiting once, and he took me to Ohio Stadium, where the Ohio State Buckeyes play football, and somehow we actually got into the stadium and onto the field. From then on, the Buckeyes were always my team! But there were few other memories.
Being eleven when all this happened, it was a lot to process. I didn’t know what to think. At that age, you don’t really understand death. Being so young, I didn’t have a close relationship with my brother, not like the others, and so it would not be until many years passed where I would finally feel this. And it was not only that I was sad for what had happened, but perhaps more so for what never did. I never got to have that relationship with him. I never got to know him. And so every year at this time, I think about this, along with the rest of my family, about what might have been.
But one thing this experience did teach me from the day on was that life is fragile. You can be fully alive and carefree one minute, and then gone the next. I was blasted with this fact at eleven years of age. I saw the impact it had on my family. At an early age I learned how life could be taken away in an instant, and that has stuck with me.
The lesson was renewed 10 years later. I had just brought my girlfriend home with me from college for the weekend, the girl who a couple years later would become my wife, and we stopped by the cemetery to visit my brothers grave. I rarely ever did this, but I wanted to share all my family with her. We stopped by his grave, and spent a few minutes, me sharing with her what I remember, and then I said a little prayer. We left the cemetery and started on our way back to college.
It was a dreary day in December. Temperatures were right at freezing, and a light mist in the air. We were just driving, listening to music and enjoying the trip. Suddenly, we hit ice on a bridge and I lost control of my pickup truck. I hit a guardrail, the airbag deployed pushing me back into the seat, and the back end then slid out from behind me. The tires must have caught dry pavement or a bump or something like that and we were launched into mid-air, flipping at 70 miles per hour. We came down on the driver’s side in the median, and then ended up back on our wheels.
Before I could think, I thrust the door open and jumped out of the truck, got Kristy out, and looked at the situation. Physically we were fine. We looked ourselves over and everything was OK. A nice young couple stopped, who happened to have a cell phone (which was not common in those days), and we called for help from the warmth of their car until the police arrived.
A situation that could have been devastating resulted in a busted truck, a bruised elbow, a sore neck and a lot of thankful people that Christmas! I’m not sure how we came through unscathed. Often I’ve question why.
And so as I read the readings today, they speak of how we know not when God will come for us. Jesus talks about how there will be many big events that take place, perhaps we see them as signs, and people that come and confuse us, and make us think that the world is ending and that the end times are near. It may be a global event, or the death of a loved one. And it’s through times like these where our faith will be tested, and we may question Him.
We’re not going to know when it’s our time. We’re not going to know when God is going to call someone close to us back home with Him. We’re not going to know when God is going to give us a wakeup call, to remind us that He is in control. It’s going to happen like a thief in the night, under some bridge in California, or over some bridge in Michigan. We don’t know the time or the place.
But what we do know, what we believe, is that there is a purpose for it all, even if we don’t know the answer. Things must happen the way they do. Only God knows why. We’ve got to have hope in Him. I’ve been saying that for as long as I can remember, that there is a reason for everything. God has a reason for letting everything happen.
Perhaps that truth planted itself into my head all those years ago with my brother. I know that after our accident in 1998, I referred to it as a wakeup call, and let it serve as a reminder that no day is guaranteed, that life can be snuffed out in an instant. Unfortunately, we need these reminders from time to time.
And it’s not for us to simply be paralyzed and worry about the future, and what might come. No, we don’t want to do that. We don’t want to be so afraid of what might happen that we stop living, or live life in a bubble. Paul warns us of this today in the second reading. Nor can we live in the past. We’ve got to keep living our lives and look to God to get us through it.
And I think that’s the second lesson I learned from my brothers passing. I saw the strength in my parents, and my siblings, a strength that nothing could break. I saw a faith in my mother. I saw a faith in my dad. It was unbreakable. The strength that only God could give. As difficult as that situation was, I know that our family is stronger as a result. And perhaps the full effects and reasoning for my brother’s early death will not be known until we pass from this world and meetup with my brother and Jesus someday.
Turmoil will come into our lives. Loved ones will be gone in the blink of an eye. Our lives will end when we least expect it. This is a certainty. Sometimes the turmoil will bring us together, other times it will break us a part. Fortunately, for my family, I feel we became a stronger family, even as we’ve all spread across the country in the years since. But I’ve unfortunately been witness to people, and families being broken apart by the turmoil they’ve encountered.
Life is short. It can end in and instant. We need to take everything God gives us in life as a gift. Everything. And we’ve got to take everything that God lets happen to us in life as a blessing, an act of grace, regardless of what it is. Because through sorrow and despair, pain and discomfort, questioning and uncertainty – He is there. We may not know why. And it’s OK to question. He makes us stronger when we do. I’ve seen this in my family. I’ve experienced this myself.
But regardless of the outcome, be faithful that better times will come. Even when it looks bleak, don’t stop living. Don’t stop caring. Have faith in Him. Believe in Him. Trust in Him, and He’ll get you through this life and into the next, where this imperfect world becomes perfect.
MAL 3:19-20A; PS 98; 2 THES 3:7-12; LK 21:5-19
