Untimely DEATH
Avery Reeder
March 17, 2010
Filed under Spirituality, Student Life, Top Stories
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2,426,264 individuals lost their lives in 2006. When averaged, 6,647 people died daily. In other words, over two million families and friends mourn the loss of a loved one each year, and over six thousand each day. Between all these numbers and statistics of death, the mourning and tears are innumerable.
On March 8, 2009, I became one of these statistics. My father, James Reeder, faced Christ in His heavenly throne that day. In an unexpected motorcycle accident on his way to work that morning, he lost his life as the doctors did everything possible to keep him alive. I remember that day so clearly. The phone call that he had been in an accident, the car ride up to Delray Medical Center, sitting in the waiting room, wondering when he would be released, and then hearing the whispers of “he didn’t make it.”
Death was a scary thought for me, as it is for most. I asked the generic question, “Why?” and Pastor Topher Harrison’s response was, “We will never know the answer to ‘why?’ I don’t know that it is the best question to ask. I know the question I asked God was ‘What?’ God what are You going to do with this?”
Untimely deaths. Trials. Suffering. It’s hard to understand the whys and whats, but in Jeremiah 29:11, we read, “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
If we are to believe His Word, and I do, then we are to hold onto what we know: God is good, and our relationship with Jesus Christ must be real. He will not fail us, and He will wipe away every tear.