Life Is Short
Posted by Pamela under Uncategorized | Permalink | | Leave A Comment | No Comments
“Forgive one another, love one another. Be in peace with one another because life is short.”
— Enrique Rodriguez
Who, you may ask, is Enrique Rodriguez? I really don’t have an answer, but I am pretty sure he is a deep and amazing person. Today was the first time I ever heard his name. It was written in a news account of a family tragedy in a town near my own. Last Saturday, a sixteen-year-old boy was driving his mother on a busy road near the shopping malls when a speeding truck hit their vehicle. A fire ensued; and in the end, both mother and son lay dead at the scene.
Reading such a story always touches me deeply. Although it has now been thirty-three years since my own son died at the scene of an accident, hearing the account of another family’s pain and seeing their faces can take me to the place where my own experience of sorrow and grief resides. I understand them in ways that other people — the ones untouched by tragedy and grief — cannot. I know the difficult places they will have to walk and how impossible their journey through grief will seem; and I know the truth that there is life on the other side of our sorrow and loss.
Every now and then, we are stunned by the absolute grace given to people in their time of pain, grace that allows them to speak words of healing to others even before their own has begun. The story I read this morning was one of those stories; and my day has begun in a place of encouragement through the words of a grieving husband and stepfather. At a gathering for family and friends, Enrique Rodriguez stood tall and loving and strong and remembered his wife with these words of faith:
“Forgive one another, love one another.
Be in peace with one another because life is short.”
So often, when we walk through cemeteries, we see the inscription, “R.I.P.,” on the tombstones. We wish for the people whose bodies lie there to Rest In Peace. When grace touches a person at the moment of their worst grief, then words come out that they don’t believe they are saying. Mr. Rodriguez was blessed with this sort of grace, and he brought his loved ones back to the land of the living by reminding us all to “Be in peace.”
Too often we forget, in the midst of our busy days, that life is short. We forget how important it is to forgive, to love, and to be at peace with our fellow travelers.
There is a family in a town not far from my own. They are beginning a perilous journey through sorrow and grief and loss. There will be times along the way when those words of grace will ring hollow for them. There will be days of despair and times when hope seems far away; but in the end, they will return to those words — words not only of grace, but of truth — and they will know that their loved ones are smiling as they live on in their legacy of forgiveness, love, and peace.