I was driving around Baltimore yesterday in the course of my job.  While I do that, if I’m not on the phone, I tend to flip radio stations.  Most often, I spend less than 5 seconds on each station.  I will sometimes scan stations for my entire commute never once stopping to listen to anything I’ve heard.  Unless it really catches my ear I’m hitting that scan button again.  (Some of you are thinking ADD but that is an accusation I’ll have to defend in another post!)

Since nothing caught my ear on the FM dial I switched to the AM dial.  On the AM dial it is most unlikely that I’ll stop for anything.  Of course, that could be a result of me only giving 5 seconds for each talk show to impress me!

But yesterday I did stop on a station on the AM dial.  As I found out later, I had stopped to listen to a preacher that had passed away back in 1988.  He had a program that would go through the bible day by day.  I don’t remember what passage he was talking about.  What I do remember was this story he told….I paraphrase.

My wife had just had our first child.  It was first thing in the morning when I rushed to the hospital.  When I arrived a nurse met me and told me that the doctor would like to speak to me.  Based on how serious the nurse looked I was concerned.  I went immediately to the doctor who told me that the baby had died.

He hadn’t told my wife yet.  So I went in to her and told her.  We wept together and prayed together for hours.  When I finally left the room I went alone on to a nearby porch.  I looked straight up into the sky and asked one question.  “Why?!”

I have never stopped asking that question and I’ve never received an answer.

He went on to say that even though he asked and wondered how this could’ve happened and why this would’ve happened, he still stayed in that conversation with God.  He said that he never understood those who faced tragedy and immediately said they were fine with it…that they simply trusted.  He said it seemed to him as if they were simply trying to say the right things in order to look the part while all the anguish and confusion and anger was just covered over and hid away.  To him it seemed less hypocritical to say “God I don’t understand why you’ve done/allowed something so painful and damaging.” rather than saying “It’s all good.” while never expressing what we really think about it.

I think what impressed me about this story was the age of the man saying it.  It wasn’t said by one of my cultural peers but by someone who truly was “old school”.  He was probably in his 80′s when he said this.  He had spent many decades trying to follow after God.  But even that far in he hadn’t gained an air of superiority in his faith nor forgotten the lessons he learned when he was young.

I have had many friends tell me the same thing over the last few years and I appreciate every one of them.  But every time I hear it again from a different messenger it makes me feel that maybe I’m not on the wrong track.

This preacher went on to say that he would never understand why God took his child and he would never stop asking why.  He also wouldn’t stop thinking that someday he would get an answer.  That someday it would all be explained satisfactorily.

As I said, he passed away in ’88.  I wonder how he feels now that he has his answers.

I recently watched a Nat Geo special on the world’s toughest prisons.  One of the prisons that was covered was Lurigancho Prison in Peru.  10,000 prisoners with only 100 guards.  This incredible disparity leaves no choice to the prison officials but to put some governing responsibilities of the prison populace into the hands of the prisoners themselves. (continue reading…)

Four years ago I started this blog…amazing where life takes you.

I never would’ve predicted the now.