The Eternal Part

Tonight, I blew off my grad school paper and went to a prayer vigil for Ben Towne. I got there a minute or two late, and walked into a hushed, packed sanctuary. There must have been around 1,000 people there-- for this little boy. For this family.

They had dimmed the lights, and lit the front with candles. We sang quiet worship songs, and a pastor read Psalms intermittently. He focused his brief talk on Psalm 88-- the darkest Psalm. This is the Psalm with no easy answer at the end-- no provisional resolution. It expresses unfathomable sorrow, and despair, and pain. I imagine the Townes are feeling something close to unfathomable sorrow, and despair, and pain. I imagine that they are finding no easy answers. Nor were any of us.

The worship was contemplative, and it was easy to pray and think throughout. At one point, I looked around the packed sanctuary-- at all these people, at all these believers-- at all these souls who were hoping for a miracle from their Lord, but ready to trust Him even if it didn't come-- and I wondered. I pictured Ben's little soul. I pictured it already stretched between this world and another. He has begun to comfort his mother, telling her not to worry, that he loves her. I wonder if he is already more Heaven than earth.

I pictured the souls in that sanctuary-- these combining, pleading souls-- I pictured them floating like wisps above us all and then pictured them gathering comfort and love, and rushing off to the Townes to deliver them. I pictured the eternal parts of us-- the parts that existed long before, that will exist long after, that exist even now, because isn't that what eternity means?-- and I pictured those reflective souls crowding into the Townes' home. There were so many of us in that sanctuary, we would be crowded up against the walls of the Townes'. We would be spilling out the windows, blooming out of the chimney, filling every corner, infusing from wall to wall the Towne home with comfort. With love. With hope for a miracle. With weeping empathy. I tried to picture Carin walking through all those comforting souls, and being warmed by them. Like a whiff of cinnamon. I pictured Jeff being wrapped up in them, like a wash of sunbeam. I pictured little Ben being cradled like a dear lullaby.

And I pictured the eternal parts of us that must already know heaven, that must already know the ends of our own stories, and I pictured Jeff's and Carin's souls at the front of the pack, watching over their grief-stricken selves below. I imagined them remembering the pain of this moment. I thought of them looking at their son below, and preparing themselves to catch him.

Jesus wept, you know. He lost a dear friend, and He wept. But what always surprises me about that story is that He didn't weep when He found out that Lazarus had died: He wept when he saw everyone else in such devastating grief. It says, "When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled... Jesus wept." I wonder if Jesus had only really experienced the "catching" part before-- this part on the Heaven side, the part that must be more welcome than goodbye. Before He was human, he must have always experienced more of the celebration when a soul passes into Heaven than the grief. But as a human: He saw it. He must have realized the incredible pain that exists on the earth side-- on the temporal side. On the side that can't see ahead, that doesn't have a glimpse of the eternal. He realized the immense pain that a family could go through during a death... And it made Him weep.

I hope, even as Jeff and Carin prepare themselves to say goodbye, that they feel some sense of comfort from all those praying souls. I hope that Ben's pain is eased; that as the scales begin to tip towards Heaven, he is less imprisoned by earthly pain. I hope the eternal parts of this family remain intertwined, and that some part of Jeff and Carin are able to hold Ben on both sides of the curtain. And I pray that, even as they weep, and even as we weep with them: there is comfort in the knowledge that He did too.

Sometimes there are no easy answers. Sometimes eternity just feels too far away-- even if it is all around us.