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“In
one sense there is no death. The life of
a soul on earth lasts beyond his/her departure.
You will always feel that life touching yours, that voice speaking to
you, that spirit looking out of other eyes, talking to you in the familiar
things they touched, worked with, loved as familiar friends. They live on in
your life and in the lives of
all others that knew them.”
Angelo Datri
Our world has lost a Nobel Prize
winner who singularly deserved that distinct honor and recognition. Elie Wiesel
passed from his tormented life’s
journey on July 2, 2016. A survivor of
Auschwitz and the Holocaust, his writings contrasted forces of evil with
Judeo-Christian love and forgiveness.
Taken prisoner by the Nazis at the age of 16, he witnessed the death of
his parents and described the horrors, searing the consciousness of all the
world:
“Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has
turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed,”
Mr. Wiesel wrote. “Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the
little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke
beneath a silent blue sky. Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my
faith forever. Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence which deprived me,
for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments
which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I
forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God himself.
Never.” Ely Wiesel in his book Night.
Recently
the Holy Spirit challenged me to ponder the
meaning of Jesus’ words to his disciples in Matthew 25:35-40 when he admonished
them to care for “the least of these”.
Jesus, with a heart that was as wide as the universe, saw us all as
needy for love and healing of body and spirit.
Pondering deeply, I came to the realization that I, too, was very much one
among the “least of these”. Friends,
wrote Augustine, come into our lives by a kind of divine lottery. As C.S. Lewis
put it: “For the Christian, there are,
strictly speaking, no chances. Christ,
who said to the disciples, “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you” can
truly say to every group of Christian friends, ‘You have not chosen one another but I have chosen
you for one another!’ The
friendship
is not a reward for our discrimination and good taste in finding one another
out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each the beauty of all the
others.” If you find yourself wrapped in
caring deeply for a band of ragamuffins, give thanks for being one with them.
“The older you get, the
more it takes to fill your
heart with wonder...Only God is big enough to take away the inner ache of
loneliness...Worship takes away loneliness because it binds the fragmented
areas of your life fusing all of it with meaning...You and I know why we are
here; we are created for His glory.......Worship builds gratitude with
appreciation love for His dignity on your loneliness.” Ravi Zacharias
in a sermon, The Inner Ache of
Loneliness
The reality of our world is so complex,
so intertwined with order and purpose, so obviously full of observable cause
and effect relationships that supernatural power was required to create it in
the first place and to keep it from falling apart over time. Today, we would
recognize such observation as
a key part of the scientific method! “All
thy works shall praise thee, O Lord: and
thy saints shall bless thee” (Psalm145:10).
Dr. Henry M. Morris III, from his book Unlocking the Mysteries of Genesis.
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