Today on my way to lunch with our ward clerk and pharmacist out of the corner of my eye I spotted a clergyman who I knew. So I went over to the anteroom and said hello.
He looked up and through red eyes and replied. It was a river of confusion and pain. As he talked of illness, of which only he escaped in his family. Then he asked 'with all the prayer, why?'
I've seen a lot of sad, sad things. Nursing especially palliative care, you see people at the extremes. You get a peek at rawness that only sneaks up on most people half a dozen times in their lives. Yet todays experience shocked me, for I thought.
It could have been me.
For I have never since knowing the clergyman had the same passion, energy, desire. The same love for the 'flock'. Yet this had befallen him. Not me.
Latter in hindsight, talking it though with Christina, I wondered.
What if he had permission to give it all away. To walk from God and the unanswered prayer. To push in no further. Just to be angry. Sitting in the ashes.