Six months since

Do I still grieve?
As death attempts to grasp me
in a vice of fear,
I grieve before my time -
to lament, to weep -
it as risen like a cold sliver of the moon.
But it is yet noon... It is yet noon.
I struggle to escape,
to wrench free of the terror
seeking to hold me down -
to murder me
before anyone has even died.
I recall it said,
"Death, be not proud."
It rings in my ears,
"Death, where is your sting?"
I rejoice knowing that
your shrouded head pales
in the light
of the more needful thing.

Willing and unwilling

Travelling to a church building, I realize my heart is broken. Not "heart-broken"but cracked. The fault is exposed in my fear that today I might have to do something about something. The willingness to respond I've somehow, somewhere willed away. Only One can heal me. I'm glad He's not like me.

Like straw...

"I've seen things that make all of my writings seem like straw." - Aquinas

• The birth of my daughters
• A family at the hospital moments after the death of a loved one
• Giant's Causeway
• Homeless people on park benches
• India
• The little blue flower with a perfectly shaped star in the center
• A girl pinned down by a car that has just flipped over, hurling her out the back window
• A man being baptised in church
• A man having a heart-attack during a service in that same church
• A baby that has stopped breathing
• A baby crawling
• Garrett's body in a casket
• The first nearly unintelligible "I love you's" from my daughters
• My wife on our wedding day
• A Hindu woman converting to Christianity
• My little girls dancing
• Conversation with my beautiful wife
• A divided Northern Ireland
• A migrant worker with dwarfism passed off from church to church until I sat across from him, both willing and unwilling to help at the same time
• Reading Psalms to a dying man
• Wind so strong that it held up a falling man
• The aftermath of my posessions that were destroyed in a flood
• Breathing, blinking, heart-beating, tasting, feeling, touching, hearing...

Needful things

Jesus said, "Your heavenly Father already knows all your needs and He will give you everything you need from day to day if you live for Him and make the Kingdom of God your primary concern." And yet, people still get sick. People still die. Conclusion? What we see and feel and experience as life is not a need. The needful thing is much greater. It is the real experience of something called "life-eternal".