Anyone who has heard of the terrible tragedy on the roads of Donegal last Sunday evening will feel their heart go out the parents, families and friends of the 7 young men and one man senior in years who died. One other young person, the driver of one of the vehicles, is in a serious condition in hospital. It is a 'head-shaking heart aching' tragedy of enormous proportions. The wider communities in which these men lived have been devastated by what has happened. Inter-twined and close knit, many many people know the families if not the lads themselves.
When something like this happens, it is natural that we ask questions? How and why could this terrible thing happen? Why does God allow tragedies such as these happen? Couldn't God have prevented this needless suffering of such magnitude? There are no easy answers. In fact there are no answers that can satisfy our natural sense of shock and questioning adequately. We are left saddened and bereft of meaning and purpose.
We live in a Universe that is free to unfold and take its course. We believe it is free just as we believe reality and human existence takes place within a context that everything is radically free from pre-determination or manipulation. Could it be that the price we pay for existing in this radically free universe is that the possibility of tragedy, personal and corporate suffering must be included in the nature of reality?
We do know that God understands suffering from the inside. The Son God sent to redeem and save us was cruelly rejected, tried and crucified. We believe that our own suffering somehow is linked to the suffering of Christ which in turn touches the suffering of the whole world. The cross is the only emblem needed to show how God experienced suffering and that we have a suffering God who suffers alongside the broken and bereaved.
But full, convincing and satisfactory answers as to why things like these happen remain unavailable to us. It belongs in the realm of mystery and that which we will only fully grasp at a later point in our journey. In the meantime, it may help to remember the old saying - 'sudden death, sudden mercy' to reassure us that, whatever else remains unexplained, the mercy of God must surely be granted instantaneously in circumstances such as these. May they have Eternal Rest.
Sudden death is part of human experience and happens somewhere in the world every second of every day. The magnitude of the event is sometimes incomprehensible as in earthquakes or floods etc but just as tragic when it happens on a lesser scale. It is when a young person dies unexpectedly that our faith is tested most of all. In truth, I think that trying to find an explanation is probably futile as we cannot hope to understand God's will. As Christians the best we can do is to pray for the souls of the deceased and pray also for the consolation of the relatives.The cross we bear in this life will surely be lifted from our shoulders in the next. It is by faith that we shall all be saved,so the manner in which we depart this world, while sometimes tragic and too soon,is not the important question but rather how we live our lives and accept the will of the Father.
ReplyDeleteBarry