Beautiful Even in the Midst of Pain

 

Each day that I walk through the neighborhood park, I notice the contrast between the green of the living trees and the stark bare branches of one that has been dead for the past several years. On this morning, the bright blue sky provided the perfect backdrop.

One of the passages read in the commital service in my faith tradition begins, “In the midst of life, we are in death.” I have read those words many, many times over the years. I have read them over people with whom I shared close personal relationships. I have read them over people I knew in a much more casual way. They always strike me when they are read because of their simple statement of the nature of life.

Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live”. Death is a constant in our lives. We love and lose those dear to us. Natural disasters strike. Wars rage. Senseless violence continues. Dreams die. Plans do not work out in the end. Hopefully, in our own spiritual journey, we die to self a little more all along the way as we become more like Jesus. In all the ways we can experience death, these words are beautifully and wonderfully true. Jesus is always at work and life is always ahead of us.

That is why I notice these trees on each walk. I see in them the fullness of our human experience. Life and death always side by side, intertwined and somehow beautiful, even in the midst of pain.

Peace.