I went for a run this morning and I was Jonah, running away from His direction, His message, His seemingly unfair movement.  I had started to thumb through a heavy week with Him and that got me moving-- out of bed, out the door, down the street and around corners and houses and blocks.  Mad inside.  Burning sad.  And filled with an unbearable concern for our people.

I am still startled by death.

I have been watching husband break this week.  I have been watching him plead for souls, wrestle with a different  weightier sort of mourning.  I tried to answer his haunting questions Should I have fought harder, could I have?  What are the words that would have worked?  And how does this happen, how do we get here-- so sad and somber when just yesterday we were sleeping outside and seeing Him everywhere.  Just yesterday He was loud and good.  

I have been meeting with the high school girl and we have been talking through the end of another man's life, an excellent man who lived with honor and left young. It is hard.  It is soul shaking.  A month ago I began to pray hard over the slow, slow dying and I told her He is fighting a physical fight and he is fighting the best he can with his broken body but there is a bigger fight going on, this isn't just about one man it is about all of you and what it will do to your souls.   Hang tight, sweet girl.  You are going to be angry, you are not going to understand, it isn't going to feel right and it is going to be hard to call Him good.  But He is.  Even now, He is. 

I am hearing the things we say to each other to brush brokenness away and I am not having it.  I am reading Paul's letter of comfort with cousin and it is hard to swallow.  I am telling my client that it is okay to be angry, it just isn't okay to be mean.  But I am feeling the meanness creep inside my spirit.

And then the run this morning-- me hanging on tight to my anger and what should have been and pushing myself against Him, hard.  His push back.  The slow shift from anger to praise.  The tightness in the back of my throat, the tiring of my body, the thrum of the Spirit whispering of truth and glory and celebration.  The deep thankfulness for the cross and the promise that conversations are not done, over, they are not finished.  I am making peace with His message.  I am imagining the roar of heaven's welcome. I am mourning the loss of a soul who didn't know and praying so hard, so often for the ones left.  I am learning to answer death strongly, fiercely; I am letting Him kill its sting.


"But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us again. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us."