Ninth Day

One of my colleagues was at her father's bed-side as he died while across town, her grand mother died in hospital. What can you say to the grieving hearts when life hurls these crushing sorrows? I was a volunteer grief counsellor and know that loss affects us in unique way. Our mourning can be inhibited or delayed by circumstances. I think of my friend emerging from that house in brilliant sunshine. People shop. They laugh. The patterns of their lives reman unaffected while the bereaved try to cope with the gap in their lives.

I cannot bear to watch or even think of catastrophe in Japan yet like most in the unaffected areas of the world, our lives continue while theirs are changed forever. I do not know why so much human suffering happens; although I have read so many explanations not least among them the classic best-seller by a rabbi "When bad things happen to good people?" Job was a righteous man and he suffered so much. I take comfort that I cannot attract Satan as Job did for indeed all my righteous are as filthy rags. Most of the time I think that I am not good enough so when trouble strikes there is often the soul searching that God might be re-directing my heart. It took me sometime to realise that the rain falls on the just and unjust. So my theology of suffering is still in incomplete.

I think of the book; Bridge over the river Kwai that depicted Japanese cruelty and I think of the horrific loss of life, much greater than the present disaster, after the bombs changed Hiroshima and Nagasaki forever during World War 11. Seven decades later, the president of the United States in offering support declared that we feel for our Japanese friends and European countries echoed similar sentiments as well as offers of help. For me this is God in disasters providing opportunities for people to show His love, to demonstrate forgiveness, to be His Hands to bring comfort and support. In times of greatest distress, so many countries unite, christian and secular organizations find common cause despite the barriers of geography, language and culture
to bring relief.




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