The Bridge to Home

We buried a young man yesterday.

Death seems to jerk us upright. It pulls us from the hamster wheel of eating, working and playing to mill around in a fog of questions.

Some of us find comfort in God and some of us can't even look him in the face.

I don't understand the whys and I am at loss to do more than wrap my arms around those in pain. If I dig for words I'm afraid I'll join the masses who offer platitudes that while good intentioned, hold no comfort:

God needed him more than us.
God works all things for the good.
It was just his time to go.
He's better off there anyway.

The things we say to try to fill the void where our questions reside. I don't know why death happens. Of course I know why. But there are certain deaths that make no sense. But we try our hardest to hang answers on those unanswerable questions.

Mold a reason around our uncertainty to make it more palatable. We can't seem to sit with silence, let the answers be bigger than us.

Why?

Is it to keep from questioning God? To keep from blasting him with our anger and hurt? Do we think God can't handle our questions, our uncertainty and anger?

Do we think he wants us to bow our heads and accept life such as it is, even as the chasm widens between us and Him?

Is it because deep down we think God is capable of hurting us or at least not caring if we hurt? That his motives aren't always for our best, but that his best creates our biggest loss and we can't accept that. So we hold onto platitudes even as we move to a more superficial existence with Him.

If we can't reach out and grasp the hand that longs for us, we'll never be able to accept that the Sovereign God who created the universe and yet knows the number of hairs on our heads looks at the infinite while we can't go farther than the finite.

We may not get the answers we need this side of heaven, but He is the bridge that gets us home.