Rising Again

As I grow older it seems that life is simply moving rapidly from one thing to the next, always coming back to where it was before. It is, I believe, a circle of both tragedy and hope, of life and death, and sometimes of rebirth and of new life.

I found myself thinking much this past week of an innocent time for me - a time of being thirteen and my first babysitting job. I was to watch my oldest sister's nephews, the two young sons of her husband's brother. Adam and Marc were beautiful little children, ages two and one respectively. They were vastly different - Adam with his dark hair and eyes and an inquisitive spirit, Marc light haired and with a soft peace about him that just made you want to hold him forever. For several days that summer, I took care of these little boys, and even now I wish that I'd had more time with them.

Time passed, and Adam and Marc grew older. Several years later, a sister named Victoria was born. And years after that, their mother and father divorced. Their father remarried and became a missionary in Costa Rica. Adam became a father, he had a beautiful dark haired boy of his own. And Marc... Last week, at the age of seventeen, Marc died in the family pool in Costa Rica.

He was an avid swimmer and surfer, water was what he loved. It made no sense that he'd drown in a relatively shallow pool. Didn't make sense to his parents - who had agreed that Marc and Victoria could stay for a year with their father to have the life experience of a foreign country. It didn't make sense to Victoria, who at twelve years old had the horror of making the saddest of discoveries alone, of pulling her brother from the water and trying in vain to revive him. Didn't make sense to Marc's grandma, or his aunts and uncles, or his cousins who now wait to bury a child and to embrace the missionary, his wife and his daughter. Even now, they wish they had more time with him. Miles away, it didn't make sense to me either, as I remembered the sweet baby I used to know and how I just wanted to hold him forever.

I didn't realize until later, that about the same time this boy from my sister's family left life too soon, I was calling my other sister to wish her a happy birthday. I was a day early. She was a day away from turning thirty-three. I had carefully thought out what my words would be to her, words of encouragement at her having reached this spiritually momentous year. Jesus spent thirty-three years of life as a man. And in an instant - in his thirty-third year - He saved the entire world from itself. He died, He rose again. He paid the ultimate price so we can all rise again too. It is my belief that we all - in our own ways, with His image before us and His guidance - can save a life by loving as Jesus loved.

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