In a heartbeat the entire world can shatter around you. Life as you know it can change.
This happened today to a family in Carroll County Maryland. Thousands of miles from me, yet still it reminds me at this moment how precious life is.
A father is dead, a mother watches over two of her children hoping that they will stay with her. A friend holds her hand and everyone prays.
We pray for the people left behind, the father has gone on to a better place. His children are left without him. His wife is alone to raise them. The realities are not yet real, everything is still to fresh and raw.
Soon though the mother will open her eyes and look at the bed across from her, empty. Tears will gather and she will wonder what God was thinking.
Soon a child will wake up in the night sweat rolling down their back tears wetting their pillow and scream for daddy, who can no longer come to comfort them.
We should still be praying for them. Not just tonight as they struggle for life, but a year from now, as they struggle to breath under the crushing weight of grief. Five years from now when a little girl has her birthday and daddy isn’t there to see his princess turn ten. Ten years from now as the mother watches her youngest child get behind the wheel of a car and prays that it doesn’t take her life the way it took her fathers.
We should pray. Many of us will forget though. We’ll loose track, not on purpose, not because we are cruel, but because we will be swept into the business of life. We will forget that there is a widow out there raising six children alone because in one moment everything changed.
We will forget the six children who lost their father and the stable life they knew flew out the window.
We shouldn’t forget. We are called to care for the widows and the orphans. Jesus called us to this. Sometimes today we look around and forget that in our world today there are widows and orphans who need our love and care, who need our prayers. We don’t even have to go over seas to find them. They live in our neighborhoods. All we have to do is remember.
To this family, I will try to remember you. Not just today, but next week, next month, next year and each and every year to come. I will try to remember to pray for you, even when there is nothing else I can do.
I will do my best.
Bob is a vividly colored Normal python and he eats every ten days. He came with his habitat and is happily settling into live in our house.
to be ok. I don’t like it when he is sick.