MEANING

There is no meaning in it all, and yet my mind struggles to find some answers and explanations. Of course, they will all fail, but I must try anyway or drown in hopelessness. Maybe that's why I wake up so early and can't sleep. I'm searching for some consolation, for some meaning. My body is tense and needs release. But the tears are dried up...until they spring forth at some memory, for some reason.

I lay Miriam to sleep last night. She's exhausted. She's had malaria for God's sake. She was swamped by visitors trying to console her parents. She was surrounded by sobbing and wailing and tears. She couldn't sleep in all that. So now we're in a familiar setting. Her crib and mosquito tent are unchanged. She has the quiet of her corner. So I lay her down to sleep, to rest in peace.
She's unafraid. She knows I'll wake her up in the morning. She knows she's safe. She knows I'll be there. She drifts into silence. She knows nothing of what I'm suffering all through the night as I think of my little boy, pale and cold in that box surrounded by the damp, African soil.



He was on borrowed time. He shouldn't have even been born. Sarah and I have had unexplained infertility for years. Thanks to modern science, Adam came to us after sitting in a freezer for months. Then his little body developed in the womb of his mother. But the enemy was already at work. Through his wild movements we have come to know so well, he managed to wrap his umbilical cord into a true knot that if pulled tight would cut off his precious supply of oxygen coursing through his mother's blood, crossing the placenta and entering his body through those umbilical blood vessels.



Sarah went into active labor a month early. Then her labor stopped. If she had gone till term, in all Adam's wiggling and kicking he may have pulled that knot tight and been stillborn. Or if her labor had progressed, as he was squeezed out the birth canal, the knot may have tightened and killed him or given him brain damage. But God intervened and stopped Sarah's labor progression and Adam and Miriam were born by c-section, healthy, screaming and eyes wide open.



His life was a miracle, a gift. He was on borrowed time the whole six months of his precious life. "The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, blessed be the name of the Lord." (Job 1:21)

Is God really so cruel if he's just a Father putting his child to sleep for the night only to wake him in the morning? "For his anger is but for a moment; his favor is for a life-time: weeping may tarry for the night, but joy cometh in the morning." (Psalms 30:5)



"Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men who have no hope...for the Lord Himself will come down from heaven...and the dead...will rise first. After that, we who are still alive...will be caught up together with them..." (1 Thessalonians 4:13-17)

Unfortunately, it's still night where I'm at...