In its piercing agony, the terminus of time has penetrated through the veil of human existence.
Echoes of voices no longer to be heard linger in the minds of those bound to their familiarity.
What was previously maintained as another’s story has snuck in and introduced itself as a personal and severe experience.
A lingering realization overtakes and dashes the hope of possibilities.
What might have been is erased by what will never be.
The soul-crushing weight of reality bears down upon a dream as it supersedes the imagination.
Pain is all. Tears are released, but they do not relieve.
It is quiet. The mornings and evenings heighten the maddening silence.
The order of chaos has become the chaos of order.
To hear them. To see them. To embrace them. To smell them. To observe their life unfold. To interact with the accidents of their decisions. To have one more parting exchange, “I love you…I love you too.” To see into the soul behind their eyes and observe their trusting heart silently communicating between a parent and a child.
Order wrought in the anguish of loss is forced without rebuttal.
An audience, time will not provide, no matter the scope of sincerity.
And so, the journey of travail awaits and beckons, “Further up and further in.”
Summits protruding above the tree line are spotted in the distance, and their peaks are whispering of a new song yet to be sung.
Is there hope? Is there a purpose? The questions for those who remain to lift like a mist above the pools of mysterious grief.
Answers fail. But two things resolutely resound into the awful ambiguity.
Honor and righteousness ready their instrumental voices in preparation for an orchestral ensemble.
To live in honor of those whose lives crossed time’s threshold, a song of a life worthy of their name.
To live righteously in the face of despair, protestingly harmonizing with God’s frequency of moral oughtness.
Lives of honor and righteousness silence the malicious sounds of that hideous evil that ended–without cause–the lives of those whose voices will never again sing out their own life songs.
And so, dig down deep within to make up for their deafening silence.
Righteousness and honor together lift a melodious new song that stands in place for those who can no longer sing.
“I waited patiently for the Lord; and He inclined to me and heard my cry. He brought me up out of the pit of destruction, out of the miry clay, and He set my feet upon a rock making my footsteps firm. He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God; many will see and fear and will trust in the Lord.”
Psalm 40:1-3
— June 7, 2022