The death of a child

Posted by Terry McNichols

As I try to make sense of the seemingly senseless death of a 3-1/2-year-old boy to the scourge of cancer, I am buoyed up by the saints all around me who join the struggle and come up with beautiful ways to explain the seeming silence of God at such a time. Here is something I have taken from the blog of another fellow wanderer, who says it well:

For me, the intense suffering of a small child is a crossroad event, especially when it leads to death. One road coming through the intersection is actually a superhighway. It is characterized by an agony that articulates the very real, very honest and very tempting cry, "Where were You?"

The other "road," actually little more than a climber's trail, dangerous and meandering, staying close to the contours of the way things truly are, is definitely the way less traveled. This path is characterized by an agony that articulates a different cry. Something David Hart wrote in the Wall Street Journal a few days before Ben was born, in response to the tsunami that killed hundreds of thousands:

"For while Christ takes the suffering of His creatures up into His own, it is not because He or they had need of suffering, but because He would not abandon His creatures to the grave. . . As for comfort, when we seek it, I can imagine none greater than the happy knowledge that when I see the death of a child I do not see the face of God, but the face of His enemy."

Vigil for Ben Towne

Posted by Terry McNichols

I sat at my computer to write something that would describe the vigil service held Wednesday night to lift up the Townes in prayer in this difficult time. I found, however, that I cannot begin to describe what happened in that church, filled to overflowing with 1000 grievers, as the body of Christ came together to mourn. Instead, I would like to link to a beautiful description, written by someone I don't even know, bound together via the internet by mutual friends and the blogs of same. Read here what was so eloquently summarized:

Jesus wept, you know. He lost a dear friend, and He wept. But what always surprises me about that story is that He didn't weep when He found out that Lazarus had died: He wept when he saw everyone else in such devastating grief. It says, "When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled... Jesus wept." I wonder if Jesus had only really experienced the "catching" part before-- this part on the Heaven side, the part that must be more welcome than goodbye. Before He was human, he must have always experienced more of the celebration when a soul passes into Heaven than the grief. But as a human: He saw it. He must have realized the incredible pain that exists on the earth side-- on the temporal side. On the side that can't see ahead, that doesn't have a glimpse of the eternal. He realized the immense pain that a family could go
through during a death... And it made Him weep.

Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted. Matthew 5:4

Ben Towne

Posted by Terry McNichols

There are no words as I stand in vigil with so great a cloud of witnesses over the deepening pain of the Ben Towne family. The hope-filled post of October 20th documented 3-year-old Ben's journey of six rounds of chemotherapy, surgery to remove a tumor, stem cell transplant, twelve sessions of radiation, twelve antibody infusions, and six courses of oral meds since August 17, 2007. We all collectively held our breaths in prayer for a complete remission. Yet it appears this is not to be.

I have no answers. Only pain for this young family that has been through so much and yet still has more pain to come. In trying to come to terms with my own grief, I come again to the powerful words of Brahms Requiem, Movement 3, English translation, from Psalms 39:4:

Lord, make me to know mine end, and the measure of my days, what it is: that I may know how frail I am. Behold, thou hast made my days as an hand breadth; and mine age is as nothing before thee. Surely every man walks in a vain show: surely they are disquieted in vain: he heaps up riches, and knows not who shall gather them. And now, Lord, what wait I for? My hope is in thee. The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God and there shall no torment touch them.