Good morning…
Deep prayer is MINE to do, so with God I experienced yesterday’s eerie extremes.
“I don’t watch the news often,” I wrote in my 99-cent, black leather journal brought home from Goodwill, “but I feel drawn to do so today, this unique day of death and debris.”
Enveloped in the eerie silence, I watched the Dignified Transfer of the thirteen service men and women killed by a suicide bomber this week in Afghanistan. Compact flag-draped coffins. Fellow service members, now pallbearers, bonded together, quietly moved in sync. The names of the victims sat for a while on the screen, most were 20-something year old kids just like our four 20-something year old kids. The grief of each loved one lost pierced the bullseye of my mama heart.
“Might these be the final U.S. casualties coming out of this grueling twenty year war?” I wondered to myself. Then I thought, “For every single American who died on that dreadful day, more than ten Afghans also lost their lives.” Each deceased person’s family, American and Afghan, is now left without a familiar face at the dinner table, forever.
Sacred. Solemn. In the eerie silence of this honoring ceremony, I soaked in the sanctity of life.
By afternoon the images coming from the TV were shouting loudly. The wet, the wild, the wicked of Hurricane Ida crashed into our shores. Several miles up the coast, as the windy rain subsided, I went outside to experience firsthand an eerie, ominous shift.
Reverent, respectful, sad sad silence in the morning. Mother Nature screaming, screaming, screaming through the streets of Louisiana and Mississippi all afternoon, all through the night.
Yesterday’s eerie extremes, the quiet and the crazy, are now seared into my innermost being as I hold in my heart all of the vulnerable victims and their families and friends grieving greatly across our globe today. Deep prayer is MINE to do.
As we all have walked away from a difficult, one-of-a-kind day, is deep prayer also on your own “MINE to do” list?
But you, dear friends, carefully build yourselves up in this most holy faith by praying in the Holy Spirit, staying right at the center of God’s love, keeping your arms open and outstretched, ready for the mercy of our Master, Jesus Christ. This is the unending life, the real life! (Jude 1:20-21, MSG).
…Sue…
