These Three Remain: Faith, Hope and Love

Sometimes while you’re going on about the day-to-day routine of your life, something happens that absolutely knocks the wind out of you.  I’ve had my fair share of those moments.  They come when you least expect them.  They come when life is ticking along and you’re in a good place and feeling like things are easy.  We take those times for granted until something unthinkable and unexpected smacks us in the face. 

This week we lost an amazing young friend to a disease that we are being told has around a 98% survival rate.  It’s good that most everyone survives, until you are the one that doesn’t.  Suddenly all the statistics don’t matter.  All the politics around the disease seem insignificant.  Those of us who knew him are still in shock that a healthy 33-year-old husband and father could be taken out in such a cruel way.  Many of you may know someone or love someone who were also part of the less than 2%.  When it happens to someone close, it suddenly becomes all too real. 

This is not a commentary on Covid, or mandates, or masking, or vaccines, or drug protocols.  I would much rather share about this family that I care deeply about and how hard this is and how brave his wife is being and how even when the worst thing you can imagine happens, there is hope.  Life will not be the same for this family, but they are strong in faith and God will carry them and they will be surrounded by family and friends and even people they don’t know who will want to help and offer comfort. 

I’d much prefer to be writing a fun, feel-good story, but a story of life that includes heartache and deep pain can remind us that there is much good and light and hope in this world.  In the worst of times we see the best in people.  We get overwhelmed in the news by all the bad things that people do and have to look much harder to hear of the goodness and kindness that’s all around us.  What I hear this young man’s family saying is that those who cared for him in the hospital were so compassionate and kind.  I hear them say that so many have prayed for them, supported them and offered to help in multiple ways.  I hear that they have faith that he is in heaven and they take comfort in his ultimate healing. 

Our hearts are broken.  But I know this young man well enough to know that he would want to share a message of hope because of his confidence that came through his faith in Jesus.  I know his wife well enough to know that she is praising God despite her broken heart.  And I know God well enough to know that His love, mercy and compassion are unchanging even when…..especially when life gets really hard.