THE MIRACLE AROUND US
I got a call this morning from my wife and she told me that a friend of the family took his own life yesterday.
My first reaction was a sense of heartache for the family he left behind. He was the father of two young children. His parents are amazing people and don’t deserve to suffer through the loss of a child. His death leaves me wondering about how awful his life must have seemed to him. Did he really feel that hopeless that he needed to die to relieve his suffering? Did he think about how his parents would grieve for the rest of their lives? Did he consider how his children would grow up without a father? There’s no way to tell. Unfortunately for those left behind, it’s a tragic, unnecessary death.
As I’ve talked about in past posts, life is the most miraculous thing in the universe. But since we’re surrounded by this miracle every moment of our lives, it loses its uniqueness. This in itself is a tragedy. Imagine being by yourself on a seemingly lifeless planet. And what if you came across a small insect, the only one you’ve seen in days. Would you squish it because it was annoying you? Probably not. You would be in awe of it because it represented the one thing you thought didn’t exist on the planet. Yet most of us don’t hesitate for a second to smash the life out of a small insect crawling across the desk at work. Ick, a bug, kill it. But that bug’s life is not unimportant. It may be small, but it’s just as valid as your life. I can guarantee its life is less destructive to the world than yours is.
Life is life, no matter the size or intelligence. For some reason it sprang up out of the particles left behind by exploding stars. Yet we end it so freely and willingly. The man who took his own life yesterday didn’t understand the miracle that existed in him. And many of us are blind to the life that exists in the smallest of creatures. But it’s there. My hope for the world is that we begin to find the miracle in life - our own and in the creatures we share this planet with. When we do that then maybe we’ll begin to do truly amazing things.