Episcopal Church Foundation Vestry Papers - for leading congregations

I keep circling back to the image of a toothy, twinkling 8-year-old Martin, one of the three fatalities of the bombing at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. I think of other pictures that haunt me: men and women jumping from the top floors of the World Trade Center, the slumped, broken shoulders of a father learning his 7-year-old was shot to death in a second-grade classroom, police tape around the neon of a movie theater.

For me, part of the gut punch of these images is the contrast, the stark difference between joy and terror.

The finish line isn’t supposed to be obliterated by a pressure-cooker bomb. A day at the office shouldn’t turn into an incomprehensible decision between death by jumping or by inferno. Children should never have to huddle under desks or in cubbies to escape rapid and incessant gunfire.

The contrast is almost too big to comprehend, the gap between what should be and what has become too hard to see together.

I don’t pretend to understand the motives of hatred, and I won’t mount a soapbox to talk about how this could be part of God’s plan. I don’t believe God plans for people to kill each other. I think God weeps with us, is torn apart by how God’s precious creation turns on itself. 

I will try, though, to think about how these images might spark new life. After all, we know God is big enough, love-filled enough, to overcome death for us. 

The idea of contrast makes me consider my own life. How big is the gap between what should be, what I profess to be, and what I am? Does my daily life reflect my deepest hopes and highest loves? Am I one person on Sunday and another through the week? Does my professed priority of family become incarnate in my daily decisions? 

What is the contrast between my faith proclaimed and my faith lived out? Are the pictures people have of me the same as I imagine, or does contrast deliver another gut punch?